


Warrior's Fortune

by KathrynShadow, Lord Vitya (ProtoDan)



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: (a miserable pile of sadness), (multiple nearly everybody eventually because what is canon), Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Chiss Sith Warrior, M/M, Multiple Inquisitors, Original Character(s), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-10-23 08:40:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 32,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10716024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KathrynShadow/pseuds/KathrynShadow, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProtoDan/pseuds/Lord%20Vitya
Summary: The art of lying has kept Vasili afloat here more than any saber technique ever could; any idiot can swing a vibroblade, but convincing the Sith that he could ever be capable of becoming one of them? That took talent.He only hopes that it'll be enough to keep him alive a little while longer. His act is only just beginning.





	1. Far Too Many Ways to Die

" _May warrior's fortune smile upon your efforts._ " -Chiss saying, an expression to wish someone good luck

* * *

 

There is a charge to the air in the Sith Academy, like walking through the inside of a thundercloud. Most of the beings walking its halls seem either oblivious to it, or else they simply don't care. But it thrums under the skin, tense and alive. It feels like a fight about to start, a fire waiting to spark—tension and anger and fear all swirling together in a terrible storm. 

The mixture of beings is almost startling in its diversity. There is the expected majority of Purebloods and humans, but amongst their numbers walk Zabraks, Togruta, Twi'leks, even a handful of Mirialans—many with scars twisted around the backs of their necks from removed slave collars. In one corner, a human cyborg gets into a fight with a crimson-skinned Pureblood. And at the entrance, alone, stands a single Chiss, his head held high and his shoulders squared, cheeks flushed lilac from Korriban's punishing heat. On his back are strapped two weapons—a simple training vibroblade and a cruel-looking war blade. 

Vasili walks with surety, pace brisk, not making eye contact with anyone he passes. If the presence of a Chiss in these halls catches the attention of the more typical Sith, no one comments on it—while he certainly catches a few questioning glances, the blades at his back deter any challengers. A few other hopefuls walk around him, apparently in the same direction, though he doesn't care to ask. Attempting to make friends on Korriban doesn't tend to end well.

At the end of the hall is an office, as cold and austere as the rest of the Academy, with a single wide desk and a high durasteel chair, on which sits a heavily-armored Lord whose face is obscured by a thick, round mask. Several other Sith acolytes have already shown up, listening to the Lord's words with rapt attention. Though his body language remains confident and casual, Vasili lingers at the back of the room, closer to the door, a faint apprehension in his glowing eyes. 

The fact that the first words he hears, hollow and rattling behind that mask, are a threat of death and disgrace doesn't really help ease that feeling. This man must be the Darth he's been told of. 

Darth Baras.

Baras radiates a dark, cruel, unknowable power, and it makes the hairs on the back of Vasili's neck stand on end. Vasili knows cold, but the chill that Baras sends down his spine when his mask turns towards him is worse than any bleak night on Csilla. The metal of that mask is thick enough that Vasili can't see even the faintest traces of heat behind it; it's as if he looks upon a corpse. Dread, heavy and cold, coils in his stomach.

"Ah, at last the newcomer has arrived," Darth Baras says, sounding both dismissive and disappointed. Neither option is particularly reassuring. "Come forward, supplicant. The rest of you know your tasks. You are dismissed." 

The other acolytes waste little time in vacating the room, either out of eagerness to please their would-be master or fear of his retribution. Vasili pushes down his fear as he steps up towards the desk and bows low. "Master," he says, keeping his voice low, even, and reverent.

Baras steps around the desk, pacing a slow circle around Vasili like a predator sizing up its next meal. Vasili straightens, keeping his eyes forward, showing no fear. "Hmm," Baras murmurs. He stands squarely in front of Vasili, his mask obscuring any expression that might indicate the impression Vasili has unknowingly given. "I have heard much of your exploits, supplicant."

Something like hope dares to catch in Vasili's chest. "I hope I've pleased you, my lord," he says, inclining his head.

"On the contrary," Baras says. His voice is sharp, each word a cold shard piercing straight through that hope and puncturing it like a balloon. "Your war blade was given to you ahead of schedule, Overseer Tremel shipped prisoners here to be interrogated for _your_ convenience, and even the Dark Side beast you killed was one here on Korriban, rather than offworld and in the wilds." Every word is another shard, but Vasili keeps his head up, standing rigid against the assault. "Through this, Tremel has done both you and this Academy a gross disservice. Your trials have been rushed, leaving you soft and undisciplined."

Vasili takes in a breath. "I apologize, my lord," he says, though he knows this isn't his fault at all. "I did not mean to offend."

"It _is_  offensive," Baras says. "I am presented with an acolyte who hasn't the barest notion of what it truly means to be Sith." He takes in a deep breath, folding his hands behind his back. "Tell me, supplicant, how long have you trained here?"

"On Korriban, master?" Vasili asks. Baras nods. "I was brought here nearly ten years ago, though I only came to this particular Academy a few months ago."

"And what have you learned?"

Vasili considers the question carefully, unsure of what answer Baras really wants. "I've mostly trained in combat, master," he admits eventually. "I've learned what I can on my own of Sith history, but for the most part, the overseers only taught me how to fight." 

Baras clicks his tongue in disapproval. "The initial stages of training," he says, with an air of forced patience, "are to be spent focusing on philosophy, conceptual tactics, and understanding of the Sith Code." He inclines his head, the hollow eyes of his mask boring into Vasili. "Can you at _least_  recite the Code?"

That much, at least, had been drilled into him as soon as he knew enough Basic to comprehend the words. "Peace is a lie," he says, "there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me."

"Hm." Baras touches his chin thoughtfully. "At least you know that much. Perhaps you are not as lost of a cause as I had feared." He takes a step back, appraising Vasili once more. "Your raw ability is undeniable, supplicant, but because of the flawed methods through which you were trained and tested, your understanding of our ways is still sorely lacking. Besides which, I am certain that your own species' worldview had already put you at a considerable disadvantage."

Vasili bows his head, accepting the reprimand without protest. If he keeps his head down for long enough, then perhaps he might get off this planet some way other than in a body bag. 

"I am your master now," Baras declares. "Tremel had become lax long before you were brought here, and his refusal to evolve, to adapt in paradigm shifts within the Order has become a liability. His actions," he says, "are those of a traitor, and I do not suffer traitors."

"Rightly so, master," Vasili says, bowing his head again. How else is he meant to respond?

Though he can't see Baras's face, the Darth seems pleased by the agreement. "Do you know what is to be done with traitors, supplicant?"

It doesn't take a mastermind to follow Baras's meaning. "They're executed, master."

"Quite right." There is an undeniable hint of pride in Baras's voice now. "I grant you immunity from punishment, so that you may complete your first task: Kill Tremel, and bring me his hand."

The command twists, nauseous, in Vasili's stomach, but he's left with but one possible answer. "As you wish, master."

Baras steps away, moving back behind his desk. "Go, then. Tremel will most likely be in his chambers. I do not wish to see your face again until he is dead."

Vasili bows again. "As you wish, master," he repeats, and turns to leave.

The door to Baras's chamber closes behind him with a deafening _clang_ , with all the finality of a sealing mausoleum. He tries to keep himself composed and impassive as he walks through the winding halls to Overseer Tremel's office, but there's a bitter taste in his mouth that will not leave. Harsh though he may be, Tremel had been kind to Vasili in his own way—kinder, to be sure, than any other instructor he's had here. There had been no physical punishment when Vasili had stumbled, only stern words and an admonition to do better. To repay that small kindness with death feels deeply, deeply wrong.

When he reaches Tremel's chamber, the Overseer is waiting behind his desk. He glances up from his work, a look of surprise crossing his face. "Acolyte," he says, standing. "I'd not expected to see you so soon." He narrows his eyes. "Has Baras sent you back to me?"

Vasili nods. "The first task he's given me," he says, "is to kill you."

Tremel frowns, and then sighs as he pushes back his chair. "I had not thought he would make such an overt move so soon," he says quietly. "Either I die, or I am forced to kill you, leaving my plans for you in tatters. A master stroke." His tone is one of admiration, but his face is clouded with unease. "Very well. You have your orders. It gives me no pleasure to kill you, acolyte."

Vasili freezes as Tremel's hand goes to his lightsaber. "Wait, Overseer," he says. "It doesn't have to be this way. Please."

Tremel's eyebrow quirks upwards, just slightly, his face flaring with angry heat. "Do not shirk your duties, unseemly though they may be. This is the way of the Sith, boy," he says. "I will do my best to make your end quick and painless."

Stars, this isn't what he wanted. This is never what he wanted. Vasili puts up a hand, refusing to draw either of his blades. "I said _wait_ ," he says, mind scrambling for some sort of a plan even as he speaks. 

"At least give yourself the dignity of dying with a blade in your hand," Tremel orders, his lightsaber igniting with a spark and a flash of red.

Vasili takes in a breath and, reluctantly, draws his blades. Tremel wastes no time in pressing an attack, striking hard with both hands on the hilt of his saber. His strokes are powerful, but they're also wide and easy to read. Vasili blocks Tremel's blade with both his own. What would be a lethal blow otherwise only glances off the war blade; Tremel slides his saber downwards and tries to use the momentum to strike Vasili in the side, but Vasili is far more agile than the Overseer gives him credit for. He blocks, and blocks, and blocks, wearing Tremel down as best he can. It becomes a horrible kind of dance, their steps and blows matching strike-for-strike.

Tremel tries to land a blow on Vasili's neck, and Vasili blocks at the base of his war blade, shoving the saber away. As Tremel falters, Vasili pushes forward, striking blow after blow--not on Tremel himself, but on his saber, battering at it until the human's grip weakens. Tremel moves his off-hand, holding it behind himself for balance against Vasili's continued assault.

Vasili keeps battering away at him, blinded by fear and the sheer, desperate need to survive. All else in this moment is meaningless. He's cognizant of his own movements, but his mind has relinquished all but the basest control. He pushes all rationality out of his head and lets the Force move around him, guiding his hands, bidding him to wait for an opening. 

When Tremel stumbles back against the wall, Vasili strikes hard with both blades, bringing them down on the human's wrist. Tremel's hand drops to the floor with a sickening _thump_ , and the lightsaber with it. Gasping for breath as he clutches the stump of his wrist, Tremel looks up at Vasili with a newfound fear. 

"You are strong," he breathes. "Stronger even than I had hoped. You will certainly be able to conquer whatever challenges Baras throws at you." A wan smile pulls at his lips. "Go on, then. Deal the last blow. I can die confident that I did not choose you in vain."

Vasili stares at Tremel, and then at the fallen hand. A fresh wave of nausea hits him, horrified now at his actions. How can he possibly kill this man? How can he deal the death blow when just maiming him has made him so sick?

"No," he says, startling himself with the strength of his own voice. He puts away his blades. "Baras said I needed your hand, as proof of your death." He bends down, prying the lightsaber out of the still-warm fingers. Vasili looks up at Tremel. "I have your hand now. Go. Get off-world. Live out the rest of your days." 

Tremel's smile fades, replaced by a look of incredulity, and then of anger. "I don't want your pity, acolyte. Do what you came here to do."

"Then don't take my pity," Vasili presses, his voice firm. He straightens, extending the lightsaber to Tremel. "Take my gratitude. Consider this my thanks for giving me a chance."

Tremel glances at the lightsaber, and then stares at his severed hand for a long moment. After a while, his face slackens, anger replaced with acceptance. "Very well," he says, taking the saber and clipping it back to his belt. "I'll lick my wounds, and leave Korriban whilst Baras revels in his success." He meets Vasili's eyes, bowing his head in respect. "Go, acolyte, with my gratitude."

Vasili bows at the waist, holding Tremel's severed hand awkwardly to the side. "I'm sorry it had to be this way."

Tremel smiles again. The expression is strangely off, as if his face isn't used to it. "As long as you live, I have hope. You will change the Order for the better, I can sense it. Cast out and destroy all who would taint it, and the victory will be ours. Goodbye, acolyte. I suspect I won't see you again."

Vasili isn't sure what to say to that. It's been so long since he's had to say goodbye to anyone—or, indeed, since he's had the chance to know anyone enough that a goodbye carried weight. "I suppose not," he says quietly. "Goodbye, Overseer."

* * *

Vasili knows that he should feel some sense of triumph, of accomplishment, when he returns to Baras's chamber with Tremel's hand. He should at least be glad of his own victory, that he managed to best a man so much more experienced than himself. All he feels, however, is a gnawing dread. If maiming a man has left him so raw and full of shame, then how in the hell is he meant to complete any other tasks that will surely be asked of him as Sith—tasks infinitely worse than cutting off a man's hand?

He doesn't belong here, and he never has. When he'd first come to Korriban, he'd thought he wouldn't last so much as a week; he'd barely spoken a word of Basic, his only combat training had been with a blaster pistol and his own hands. He'd learned quickly enough—the threat of impending death had been more than enough incentive—picking up both Basic and the Imperial accent in a matter of months, and becoming capable with a blade shortly after that.

By far the most valuable skill he'd learned, however, was acting. The art of lying has kept him afloat here more than any saber technique ever could; any idiot can swing a vibroblade, but convincing the Sith that he could ever be capable of becoming one of them? That took talent.

He only hopes that it'll be enough to keep him alive a little while longer. His act is only just beginning.

Baras is standing in front of his desk when Vasili walks in. "Ah, the supplicant returns," he says, his tone unreadable. "With a bloodied weapon and a traitor's hand, I see. Then he is dead?"

"The deed is done, master," Vasili says, bowing as he holds out the severed hand in both his own. 

Baras turns the hand over, inspecting it. He hums thoughtfully, then looks up at Vasili. When he speaks, there is a smile in his voice. "You have done well, supplicant." He lifts the hand, prying an ornate ring from the middle finger and pressing it instead into Vasili's palm. "Here. Take this as a token of your accomplishment—remembering past achievements can be a powerful tool to embolden oneself and strengthen resolve."

Swallowing his distaste, Vasili bows again, pocketing the ring so he doesn't have to look at it. "Thank you, master. You are most gracious."

Baras chuckles. "Truth be told, I am somewhat surprised you were able to carry out my will. He thought of you, in some small way, as his son." He turns, dropping the hand into a glass jar—likely to preserve it later. "Tell me, how did it feel to strike the killing blow?"

What is he supposed to say? "I did what had to be done, master," Vasili replies. "It was my duty, no more, no less." He desperately hopes that Baras can't somehow sense the lie. 

"You mask your feelings well," Baras says, and for a moment, there is a flash of terror. Any second now, Baras will call his bluff, will realize how unfit he is. Vasili stamps out that fear, instead bowing his head at the double-edged compliment. "Take care not to suppress them. Remember, it is through passion that we gain strength, acolyte. By embracing the Code and destroying your former master, you have broken his chains... and escaped his fate." 

Vasili swallows, the threat far from lost on him. "As you say, master."

Baras nods, apparently pleased. "You are a fast learner. Good. You will need that adaptability in the future." He moves, stepping back behind his desk, although he doesn't sit. "I hope you have sufficiently reveled in your triumph, acolyte. I have another task for you."

"I am ready, master," Vasili answers. It isn't as though he has the option to protest.

"You will go into the tomb of Tulak Hord," Baras says. "There are ancient inscriptions that once adorned its walls, which now lie in ruin. Explore the entirety of the tomb, retrieving a shard from each of its shrines, and bring them back to me. If you fail, you will die." 

This, at least, Vasili knows he can do. "I understand, master."

"My other acolytes have already begun their search. Understand, there are no rules regarding how these shards are to be retrieved—they are your rivals, and they will stop at nothing." He sits, gesturing towards the door. "Go. Do not fail me, acolyte."

"I won't disappoint you, master," Vasili says, bowing deeply. 

Baras waves him away, and Vasili quickly turns on his heel to leave. 

A lifetime ago, this is what Vasili had dreamed of doing. Exploring ancient ruins and seeking the information they contained, expanding both his own understanding and his people's. He had spent weeks, months crawling through frozen tombs, through long-abandoned caves and catacombs, poring over their secrets, recording them to share with anyone who sought the same knowledge.

Here, however, knowing that failing to find the artifacts he seeks will result in a painful death, he cannot find joy in the seeking. There is only fear, and fear, he finds, does not bring wisdom.

The heat of Korriban's sun beats down on Vasili's back as he makes his way down to the tomb, making him feel as though he might roast alive in his tunic. He runs as fast as he can without risking death by heat exhaustion, taking care to give the swarms of k'lor'slugs a wide berth, and the other acolytes an even wider one. The idea of fighting and killing a fellow acolyte just for a fragment of ancient knowledge doesn't sit well in his stomach, but he thinks that the fear of death is enough to overcome that nausea. 

The shade of the tomb offers a welcome relief, though Vasili cannot help but feel that it is far colder than it should be. More than likely, he thinks, it's merely a figment of his imagination, but he still can't quite shake the notion, nor can he push away the increasing sense of dread creeping into his bones the deeper he walks into its crumbling halls.

There is a darkness coiled here, lingering like a fog waiting to choke the life out of him. The malevolent energy creeps under his skin, into his lungs, his heart. Vasili tries to steel himself, to resist the fear that sparks in his blood and threatens to paralyze him. He walks with feigned confidence through the chambers, and as he moves deeper and deeper into the tomb, the darkness becomes that much more oppressive. 

Vasili keeps to the shadows, walking only at the edges of each chamber if he can help it. Acolytes, both ones he recognizes and ones completely unfamiliar to him, roam the darkened halls with equal trepidation, blades drawn. Distantly, he thinks he hears screaming, coupled with the sound of vibroblades clashing. He's not terribly eager to investigate. 

As he approaches each shrine, the darkness seems to spike, digging its claws into his very spirit, shredding him from within. Vasili shudders, but forces himself to stay calm as he gingerly picks up the clay fragments, taking great care to make sure they don't crack or flake. While he knows he must not fall behind—and, frankly, the faster he can get out of here, the better—the idea of damaging such ancient relics is grossly offensive to him. 

When he's sure he's collected them all, Vasili makes his way out of the tomb as fast as his feet will carry him, carefully ignoring the corpses he passes on the way out. The cold, tense energy of the Academy's halls is a welcome respite from the active malevolence that seethed down in the tomb. Vasili doesn't give himself time to savor the shift, however—while he may not know much about Baras yet, he can't imagine the man will want to be kept waiting. Certainly not by an alien he had declared _soft_  and _undisciplined_  mere hours before. His standing with Baras may have improved after the lie with Tremel, but Vasili knows that his place is still far, far below his human counterparts.

To his surprise, when he enters Baras's chamber, he finds it empty but for the Darth himself. Baras stands beside his desk, a datapad in hand and his posture rigid. He turns to Vasili and lowers the datapad. 

"Ah, supplicant, you've returned," says Baras, sounding... not disappointed, at least. "And ahead of your peers. You are to be congratulated."

"Thank you, master," Vasili says, bowing deeply and extending the inscription fragments in both hands. 

Baras accepts the shards. Vasili straightens to watch him examine them, and a thoughtful sound rattles behind the mask. "Well done, supplicant. Well done indeed."

Relief washes over Vasili, and he lowers his head again. "I'm glad to have pleased you so, master."

"You have pleased me immensely," Baras says, "through good work and expediency. As reward for a job well done, I am giving you a special assignment. Consider it a respite between trials."

Vasili swallows the lump of anxiety that forms in his throat at the announcement. "You honor me, master," he says. "What is the assignment?"

Baras places the shards at his desk, apparently with little consideration for how they should be arranged—a part of Vasili twitches, but he does his best to suppress that sentiment—and picks up the datapad again. "Recently, it has come to my attention that the daughter of a prominent Sith Lord, one Darth Vilis, has made an attempt to defect from the Order and leave Korriban without clearance."

Vasili swallows. _People can_ do _that?_

"This is, as I'm sure you know, explicitly forbidden. Vilis is understandably outraged that his daughter could be such a traitor," Baras continues. "To save the bloodline the embarrassment of having this treason made public, the daughter must be found and executed." He picks up a holo, which flickers to life with the stuttering image of a female Twi'lek, eyes wide in defiance, a simple headdress adorning her forehead. "This is the traitor. Commit her face to memory, supplicant. She will likely be making an attempt to stow away on the next shuttle offworld, but she will not be hard to find." There's a cold edge in Baras's voice now, shards of ice raking down Vasili's spine. "After all, an uncollared Twi'lek is hardly a normal sight here."

Vasili keeps his face blank, smothering his revulsion. No matter how much time he spends among Sith, he doesn't think he'll ever get used to the notion of slavery. Nor does he want to. "As you say, master."

"To ensure your success, you will be joined by a small hunting party, whom you will meet outside the Academy." Baras turns off the holo with a quick motion of his hand. "Be warned—the traitor is strong in the Force. As strong as yourself—or perhaps stronger. But you have not failed me thus far," Baras says. "I am sure that she will be of little challenge to you."

"I won't disappoint you, master," Vasili assures him with another deep bow. 

"See that you don't," Baras says. "Go. Do not return until the girl is dead."

Vasili turns on his heel, unable to shake the sense that this is less a reward for a job well done and more of a punishment for some sin he doesn't know he's committed. Still, he'll see this assignment through as best he can—what other choice does he have? At the very least, Baras doesn't seem to be actively _trying_  to kill him, or else he would simply be hunting down this Twi'lek woman unaided, and probably skewered at the end of a lightsaber in the process. But why else would Baras send him, barely an acolyte, after the child of a _Darth,_  if not to remind him of his own mortality?

Korriban's sun scorches like hellfire in comparison to the frigid cold of Baras's chambers. Vasili tugs at the collar of his tunic, sweat starting to run down his back. He glances around, scanning for the supposed hunting party he's meant to join.

"I suppose that's the one who's going to be helping us," drawls a voice from behind. 

Vasili whirls to face the sound, and finds himself faced with two humans: one male, one female. Both have vibroblades strapped to their belts, marking them as acolytes, the same as him. The female is small and slight, with thick ropes of dark scars marring the side of her face. Her eyes, narrow and dark amber, regard him with a critical disdain.

The male—whom Vasili assumes is the one who spoke—is tall, pale, with an ugly network of scar tissue nearly covering the right side of his face. His right eye looks entirely mechanical, and a cruel metal rigging seems to be all that's keeping his jaw together. Vasili's curiosity as to what the hell happened to him is somewhat overshadowed by the fact that he's certain these two would just as soon kill him as the woman they're to hunt.

"Do you see any other Chiss on this planet?" asks the female, glancing up at her companion with the same unimpressed disdain with which she regarded Vasili.

The male's lip curls, heat flaring across his face. "No," he says, arms folded across his chest. "So. You're our backup." His cybernetic eye narrows, scanning Vasili up and down. Vasili stands perfectly straight, despite feeling more than a little exposed. "Don't expect us to slow down for you."

The female rolls her eyes. "But we'll slow down to bicker, of course. Come on, both of you. We have a Twi'lek to kill."

Vasili nods, turning to look out to Korriban's horizon—even the vast expanse of sand and tombs is better than staring into those cold eyes. And she's is right, besides. Standing here is doing none of them any good; they have a Twi'lek to kill.


	2. Wouldn't You Like to Feel Alive?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Vasili makes friends. Sort of.   
> Not really.

The silence between Vasili and his comrades is agonizing. He's spent time in the near vicinity of other Sith before, but never ones with whom he was meant to actually collaborate. How is he meant to ally with beings who look like they'd almost rather stab him than their actual target?

After half an hour of dead silence, Vasili has had enough. "Seems strange to fight with you when I don't know either one of you," he says.

The male human glances at him sidelong with that cruel-looking mechanical eye. "Why do you care?" he asks.

Vasili bristles despite himself. "It just makes sense to know the warriors you're going into battle with," he says. He's parroting the CEDF handbook, he knows, but it's not like these two will know that. "Cameraderie can be an inspiring thing."

"Are you really trying to make friends on Korriban?" the male drawls, staring in open disbelief.

Heat rises up Vasili's neck, independent of the unbearable desert heat. "I wouldn't go that far," he says. "But we should at least know one another's names, don't you think? If something goes wrong, it's hard to warn one another of danger without names."

Vasili glances at the female, who shrugs. "You've got a point there," she concedes. "Shirenne. My name is Shirenne. This one—" here she gestures to the male before he can get a word in, causing another bright flash of heat to flare across his face—"is Vitya."

That was easier than expected. "Alkaev'asil'inrokini," he says. 

Vitya gives a derisive snort, his marred face twisting into a grimace. "There is no way in seven hells I'm going to even try."

Vasili sighs. "You can call me Vasili if that's too hard, then." It was worth a try, at least. He'd say it's a pleasure to meet the two of them, but he somehow doubts this is enjoyable to any of them. "Whose apprentices are you?" he asks instead.

"No one's," Vitya says bitterly. "Overseer Harkun has us both running around in circles trying to get us killed." When Vasili glances over at him, there's a sharp, dangerous smile on his lips. "Not that we're going to give him the satisfaction, of course."

A faint shiver runs up Vasili's back. "Of course not," he agrees. 

The conversation drops dead after that, all three going quiet as they draw nearer to the offworld shuttle. Vasili tries to reach out with the Force, to sense their target, but all he feels is the seething bitterness radiating from his companions. He doesn't flinch back from it, harsh thought it may be, but any attempt to push past it and feel something—anything—else is fruitless, everything around him drowned out by the others' hate. Stars, he can't tell if it's just that he's still bad at this or if their anger is simply that strong.

He gives up eventually, settling for peering around, eyes flitting from cave to cave and crevice to crevice. A hand on his shoulder stops Vasili with a jerk, pulling him back slightly and making him stumble. 

"Do you hear that?" Vitya says, voice barely a whisper.

"No, because neither of us have extra ears like you," says Shirenne; Vasili can tell she's rolling her eyes without even looking.

Vasili glances behind him to see Vitya gingerly touching his ear—or rather, to the small augment in his ear that Vasili hadn't noticed because of everything _else_  wrong with his face. "There's someone in that cave," he says, pointing to a small cavern entrance, the inside of which Vasili can't make out through the gloom. "Just one person, which means they're either insane, stupid, or hiding from something."

"You think that's her?" Vasili asks.

Vitya flexes his hand, electricity crackling between his fingertips. Another dangerous smile cracks his features. "One way to find out."

Shirenne puts a hand on Vitya's elbow, slowly shaking her head. "We can't just go rushing in like idiots," she says. "She'll either run away or kill us in the confusion."

"So what's your plan, then?" Vitya demands. 

"I go in first," Shirenne says, waving a hand. Something... something _flickers,_ and she vanishes from sight with nothing but a vague violet shimmer in the air. Not even the lingering glow of her body heat remains. He'll never admit it aloud, but the knowledge that she can do that sends a chill through Vasili's blood.

"I hate when you do that," Vitya mutters.

Shirenne ignores him. Or, at least, Vasili assumes she does. "I'll make sure she's in there, and block any exits we can't see from out here. You two wait out here long enough that I can get into position, and then follow me in. _Then_  you can rush in like idiots, while we have the element of surprise."

Vasili and Vitya share a glance. Vitya shrugs. "Makes no difference to me."

"Seems reasonable enough," Vasili says. "So long as you're sure you'll be all right going in alone."

Shirenne probably shrugs. Vasili can only guess. "Trust me, no one's going to know I'm even in that cave unless they're very lucky. So long as you two are quick about it, anyway."

"What kind of idiot trusts a Sith?" Vitya points out dryly. 

"You, apparently," Shirenne snaps. "I'm going in. You two stay here for two minutes, and... ugh. Try not to kill each other."

The muscles of Vitya's jaw tense, and another surge of heat flares up across his face. "I am _not_  an idiot," he mutters. But the empty air doesn't respond; Shirenne is already gone. Vitya huffs, crossing his arms.

Vasili bites back a grimace. Of all the Sith in all the galaxy, he has to end up with a pouty one. He only hopes that that pouting doesn't also manifest as particularly murderous tendencies. And they have to spend at least two minutes alone with one another? _Ktah_.

"So," Vasili says, sitting on a boulder to give his feet a rest. Because he knows the silence will eat him alive, and he's genuinely curious— "Are you two..." He gestures vaguely. "You know."

Vitya cocks an eyebrow. "Where the kriff did you get that idea?" 

Vasili swallows. Right. Trying to be friendly is a stupid idea. Not that he ever learns. "You talk to each other like you are," he says with a small shrug. "Or at least like other Sith couples tend to." 

"We are _not_ a couple," Vitya says, snorting. "We formed a partnership to increase our chances of getting off this stupid planet alive."

The human clearly has no desire to continue that particular line of conversation, so Vasili lets the matter drop. He tugs at his tunic collar, grimacing at how damp with sweat the garment has become. Unsure of what else to do, Vasili glances around, noting with a twinge of anxiety that the sun has started to fall behind the tombs. Nighttime on Korriban, especially in an area he's only barely familiar with, is not an appealing notion. If something goes wrong in that cave, no one is likely to come looking for them until after dawn—if anyone cares enough to come searching at all.

"Let's go," he says, standing. "I don't want to be outside after sundown if I can avoid it."

Vitya crosses his arms. "Afraid of the dark, are you?"

Vasili grits his teeth and unstraps the blades from his back. " _No._  But that doesn't mean I want to deal with what comes crawling out of the sand after the sun goes down."

Opening his mouth as if to offer another pithy retort, Vitya eventually just twists his mouth into an annoyed grimace and nods. "Fine by me," he says. "Lead the way."

Blades thrumming in his hands, Vasili steels himself as best he can for whatever awaits them in the cavern. Fear still rushes through his blood, and he lets it, lets it push him forward rather than away—because no matter how much he may fear the Sith they've been told to kill, he still fears Baras more. He can only assume the same is true for his... comrades. 

Thanks to his natural low-light vision, it doesn't take long for Vasili's eyes to adjust to the cave's gloom. Bones from a myriad of species litter the floor, some picked clean, others cracked or shattered. Long-dried blood splatters the walls, floor, and ceiling. The longer Vasili looks around, the more his stomach twists. And looking ahead, the only way through is forward; what branches there may have been before collapsed long ago. 

Vitya's footsteps behind him are surprisingly quiet, which allows Vasili to hear the faint echo of an unfamiliar voice drifting down the passage. The tone is soft, wavering slightly—pleading? Vasili frowns, moving further into the cave to try and pick up the words.

"—know you're here, I can feel you. Pease, come out so that we can _talk._ " There's a distinct Imperial accent there, but it can't be the Twi'lek they're looking for, can it? She's supposed to be a powerful Lord, and Sith Lords don't beg. 

Vasili and Vitya enter into a large chamber, the walls of which look much less rough-hewn than the entire rest of the cavern. To the back, there is what looks to be an altar, carved directly from the wall. Before the altar, kneeling with hands folded over her lap, is a red-skinned Twi'lek, her eyes closed. In contrast to the plea in her words, she looks positively serene.

She looks up, and Vasili's stomach tightens. This is absolutely the rogue Sith they're meant to kill. 

"You're here to kill me, aren't you?" she asks, sounding a mix of frightened and exhausted. 

 "That's the idea," Vitya says, stepping forward. "You _are_ Darth Vilis's daughter Rifith, aren't you?"

She sighs. "Yes."

Lightning sparks from Vitya's fingertips. "Then let's get this over with, shall we?"

Rifith stands with a weary grace, drawing and igniting the lightsaber at her hip with a spark of red light. "I don't want to do this," she says quietly. 

"You can always just surrender and let us do what we came to," Vitya sneers.

Vasili raises his blades, steeling himself for whatever might come next. _As strong as yourself in the Force, perhaps stronger._  Probably stronger, if he had to guess—or, at the very least, with a better-refined kind of strength. As long as he's been here, he still doubts he stands much chance against the child of a Darth. 

Vitya throws up an arm, an arc of lightning splitting out from his fingertips. Rifith raises her lightsaber to block it, the energy fizzling into nothing. Vitya snarls like an angry akk dog, throwing out another bolt, and another, and another. Rifith is breathing heavy already, yet she blocks them all with apparent ease. 

"Are you going to just stand there like an idiot?" Vitya snaps, taking his eyes off of Rifith for the half second required to glare at Vasili.

That split second is all she needs. Her open hand reaches out and clenches, and Vitya's knees buckle. He falters, hitting the ground with a gasp. With a flicker and a war cry, Shirenne comes out of the shadows, her vibroblade driving through Rifith's side. A terrible scream tears past Rifith's lips, her free hand clutching the wound, and for a moment Vasili thinks it's already over—

A pool of dark smoke spreads out around Rifith's feet, creeping across the cavern floor. Vasili and Shirenne backpedal, and in the moment when they look one another in the eyes he can tell that the same confusion and fear has gripped them both by the heart. The smoke swirls around Vitya, who is still kneeling on the floor. He gives a choked sound and falls onto his hands, even though Vasili can't see any visible injury.

That just terrifies him all the more.

The smoke gathers at his feet, and slowly, a wave of bleak, deathly exhaustion creeps up his legs and into his bones. Everything feels so _heavy._ His legs start to shake, and something in his insides begins to ache, but he pushes forward. (What else can he do?) Rifith takes a step backwards, eyes wide with fear. She reaches out, palm outstretched. The flesh beneath where her hand had been is pale, but other than that it's as if it had never even been damaged. What the _hell?_

The guilt at what he's doing has faded, replaced by chilling terror. Fear—of what she's doing to him, of what Baras will do if he fails—drives him forward. Vasili strikes with both blades. Rifith blocks with her saber, though her arm strains from the impact. She pushes him back with a grunt, extending her hand towards him and clenching it like before. His insides burn, his vision swimming, and he can feel his knees giving out and _no no no no not like this not like this—_

Her face a mask of cold anger, Shirenne bolts forward, striking Rifith across the back with her vibroblade. Rifith falls with a cry, yet when she turns to put both of them in her line of sight, the only evidence that she'd been struck at all is the gash in her robes. 

Vasili pushes himself back up, bearing down on her with what strength he has left. She can't block both of them. They have to win this. They _have_  to. 

Rifith sweeps out her hands. A rush of air throws all three acolytes back, hurling them against the cavern walls. Vasili hears something crack. He collapses on the floor, every breath a stab of agony in his side. To his right, he sees Vitya, crumpled and unmoving against the stone. Across the chamber, Shirenne is still standing, battered though she may be.

If she can keep going after all that, then so can he. Vasili pushes himself to his feet, biting back the pain. He swings his war blade in a sluggish arc, aiming for Rifith's neck. She blocks him. He strikes again, this time with his vibroblade, catching her off-guard across her stomach. Blood soaks her robes, and the smoke pools thicker around her feet for a moment. Shirenne stumbles.

The wound seals.

Despair coils heavy in Vasili's chest, but he smothers it down, letting the fear and the frustration and the sheer desperation to survive keep him on his feet. As if his strength were renewed, he batters at her again, again, again. She can't keep this up forever. At some point, her power—or her luck—has to run out. 

There's a cry from behind—of pain or of anger, Vasili isn't sure—and a bolt of bright white strikes Rifith in the back. She falters. Vasili strikes down as hard as he can, both blades crashing against her lightsaber. Her hand shakes. She grips the hilt with both of them now, the cruel red glow of the blade a hair's breadth away from her face. Her eyes are wide with terror.

A sweeping strike from Shirenne slashes through Rifith's legs, and she falls with a scream. Her lightsaber extinguishes, clattering to the ground. She shakes as she seals the wounds, but as she reaches for her saber, Shirenne kicks it across the chamber. 

When Rifith looks up at them, there are tears in her eyes. " _Please,_ " she says, putting her hands up. "I don't want to fight you. Any of you. I just want off this world—the same as you."

Shirenne walks wordlessly towards their fallen companion, holding out her hand. Vitya grasps it and lets her pull him up to his feet. His face is bloodied and bruised, and his robes are tattered, but his expression is just as snide as ever.

"Krayt spit," Vitya sneers. "I can't speak for this one—" here he gestures at Vasili—"but _I_ plan to get off this kriffing planet by becoming the best Sith I can be, not fleeing like a coward."

"Why do you want to leave?" Vasili asks. He lowers his blades, having little desire to cut down someone already on their knees. Stars, he's just so damn _tired._

Rifith looks up at him with gratitude in her purple eyes. "I can't keep this up. I've been here since I was _born_ , it's—I've tried to live on the edges, tried to be Sith enough to please my father for over twenty krething years, but I _can't._ All I want is to leave, one way or another, and make a new life for myself." She looks between all of them and lowers her hands. 

Shirenne turns, mouth twisted in a grimace. "You do realize you'll just get the rest of us killed if we leave you alive." She raises an eyebrow. "If you don't want to be Sith, getting three people murdered isn't a good place to start."

Rifith glances over her shoulder, apparently undisturbed by Shirenne's presence. "There are ways for you to fulfil your masters' wishes without really killing me," she says.

"Like what?" asks Vasili, before Vitya can so much as open his mouth.

"Force deception," she says earnestly. "I may not be the Sith they want me to be, but that doesn't mean I don't know any of the tricks of the trade. I'll fake my death, and you can tell your masters that you felt my heart stop. You don't even have to lie to them."

"After _all_ that?" Vitya protests. "Whatever the kriff you did nearly killed me!" He lets go of Shirenne's arm, taking a few shaky steps forward. "If I fried your brains out it'd just be self-defense at this point." He falters, and Shirenne grabs his elbow to keep him upright. 

Vasili swallows, thinking that none of them are in any shape to try and kill anyone right now. "What do you mean?" he asks quietly, not daring to hope.

"I know how to make my heart stop for long enough that anyone with half a brain would declare me dead," Rifith says. "I'll wake up when it's safe, and sneak onto a shuttle off world." She glances at Vitya, then casts her eyes downward. "And, for what it's worth, I'm sorry for what I did. I just... I don't want to die here. Surely you all understand that, or else we wouldn't be talking."

Vasili looks at his companions. Vitya is still seething, but Shirenne's expression is one more of exhaustion than anything else. He doesn't trust the former to make any reasonable decisions right now—not ever, but especially not now—and the latter doesn't look to be in the mood to say anything after that ordeal. Not that he can blame her.

He turns back to Rifith, strapping both blades onto his back once more, and offers her his hand. She takes it, a hesitant smile on her lips as he helps her to her feet. "Where will you go?" he asks.

"Wherever the winds take me," she says. "I hope to find a neutral world where I can lay low a while. After that..." Her smile grows, turning just a little more genuine and confident. "It's something of a relief not to have my future set in stone. We shall see."

There's a sharp pang of envy in Vasili's chest that he quickly shoves down and smothers. "How long have you been planning this, anyway?" he asks.

Rifith draws one of her lekku over her shoulder, glancing off to the side. "I've wanted out for years," she admits, "but I only started really planning a few months ago." She meets his eyes, hope shining behind the fear. "Are you really going to let me go?"

Vasili takes a breath. "It's not as if any of us have the strength left to actually attack you again," he points out. 

Rifith's expression turns to one of guilt. "I _am_  sorry about that," she murmurs. 

"You can't just—!" Vitya starts, but when his knees start to buckle again, he apparently reconsiders his stance on things. Glowering, he turns his gaze to Vasili. "You'd better know what you're doing."

Shirenne guides him back to the wall, which he leans against with practiced petulance. She rests her back against the stone, arms crossed. When she notices Vasili is looking at her, she just shrugs. "I'm not getting into another fight. I'm not an idiot." Vitya glares at her for the implication. "But I don't trust her either. Not after... _that._ "

Rifith swallows, glancing at her discarded lightsaber, still lying on the floor across the chamber. "Take my saber," she says, looking back up at Vasili. "It's not like I want that thing anyway. It'll serve as added proof to your masters that you did your job well. If I'm lying to you, it'll be easier to kill me with a saber than a training blade."

Vasili follows her gaze, stretching out his hand. The saber shudders before jerking forward into his open palm. It's... lighter than he'd ever have expected, with ridges of cold durasteel all along the hilt and cruel-looking spike jutting out around the emitter. He tucks it into his belt before unstrapping his blades from his back. Rifith takes a half step back, fear in her eyes again. Vasili just rests them both on the ground, then hooks his fingers under the hem of his tunic. 

"What the kriff are you doing _now?"_  Vitya demands as Vasili peels his tunic up and over his head.

Vasili holds the garment in one hand, holding it out to Rifith. "Your tattoos," he says. "You'll be recognized the second you walk out of here, and then all four of us will be dead."

Vitya stares for a moment, then snorts. "That might be the most intelligent thing you've said this whole time."

Rifith smiles and takes the tunic in both hands, unfolding it and wrapping it around her lekku. "Thank you. I'm sorry we didn't meet under better circumstances," she says. "You seem far too kind for this place." There's a snort from the other side of the chamber, but Vitya keeps the rest of his opinion to himself this time. "I'll... I'll go to sleep now. You can each test my pulse yourselves if you want."

She kneels on the floor again, hands folded on her knees, an almost perfect mirror of how they found her. Her eyes slide closed, and then, without earning, she collapses. Vasili flinches back as her body collapses in a heap, her sense in the Force snuffed out like a candle. Sharing a glance with the others, Vasili takes a hesitant step forward. The other two follow suit, clearly wary.

Shirenne kneels down first, pressing a finger to Rifith's neck. "Nothing," she says eventually, sounding almost impressed. 

Vitya follows suit, scowling. After a moment, he reluctantly nods, though he doesn't seem inclined to verbally agree. Vasili crouches down on the other side of Rifith's body, taking her wrist in one hand. The skin is still warm, but past that, it's as if she's really a corpse. 

"Now what?" asks Shirenne. 

"Now," Vasili says, "we tell our masters what happened." He pulls the lightsaber out of his belt, turning it over in his hand. A heavy weight has started to form in his stomach, on top of the exhaustion from the fight. "If it's all right with the two of you," he adds quietly, "I'll take this with me. I don't know your Overseer, but I imagine he's easier to trick than Darth Baras."

Shirenne eyes the hilt with one eyebrow, and then shrugs. "Makes no difference to me. I'd rather have a staff anyway."

"Harkun is a weak-minded, gullible piece of bantha shit," Vitya says with a snort. "Keep the damn thing. I just want this over with."

With a sigh of relief, Vasili tucks the hilt back into his belt. "Let's go," he says, struggling to push himself back onto his feet.

His limbs feel like lead, but Vasili manages to stand upright, and he feels just stable enough to reach out a hand to the others. Shirenne shakes her head, getting to her feet on her own. Vitya looks at it as if it's visibly diseased, but grasps his wrist and lets Vasili pull him up. Despite the ache spread through his entire body, Vasili bends down and picks up his blades, the weight of them nearly unbearable.

"What about your shirt?" Vitya asks dryly as they make their way out of the cavern. "How do you plan on explaining that?"

"It got ruined in the fight," Vasili says, "and I was honestly dying of heat exhaustion anyway. Krething deserts."

That gets something perilously close to laughter out of both the others. 

* * *

They part ways upon crossing the threshold into the Academy, Shirenne and Vitya making their way to their Overseer's chambers while Vasili returns to his own master.

Vasili is on the brink of dropping from exhaustion by the time he reaches Baras's chamber, but he makes it by sheer force of will. Stars, he hopes he's allowed to rest for just a little while before being sent off on some other suicide mission. 

"The supplicant returns triumphant," Baras says, arms open wide and proud. "And with a trophy, I see. I take it you've bloodied it well?"

Vasili pulls the saber out of his belt and bows, extending the hilt towards Baras. "The deed is done, master," he affirms, heart thundering behind his ribs.

"The prize is yours, supplicant," Baras says. "Use it well, and may it be an instrument of ruin upon your enemies."

Vasili straightens, tucking the hilt back into his belt. "Thank you, master. You are most gracious."

"You will find that those who serve me well are rewarded well," Baras says, pride in his voice. "Now, supplicant, revel in your success a while. When you have rested, come back to me—your last and greatest trial awaits."

Thank the _stars._  "Thank you, master," Vasili says with another deep bow. 

"Do not linger long. I expect you back by dawn." Baras waves a hand. "Go."

Vasili doesn't need to be told twice. He turns, a little more energy in his steps now that the promise of rest dangles so close before him. There's no communal sleeping area for acolytes in this Academy, not like in the satellite academy at which he had first trained—only dormitories for those who have been taken on as apprentices. Like hell is he going to sleep outside, though, so instead he makes his way to the library. Hidden in the maze of shelves, it won't be hard to find a place to sleep where no one will find him for a few hours at least. 

He huddles up in a corner on the floor, barely able to keep his eyes open as he rests his war blade on the floor in front of him. Sleep comes fast, mercifully pulling him under into a dreamless oblivion. 

* * *

Vette grips the bars of her cage to keep herself upright through the frankly gratuitous shocks the jailer keeps hitting her with. She sticks her tongue out at the human, pushing herself back when it looks like he's finally done. " _Ow,_ " she says, wrinkling her nose. "Give it a rest. You've made your point already."

"I'm having my fun while I still can, slave," says the human, in that thirty-crates-a-day voice that just might be the worst thing ever. "Just got word that—ah, look at that, right on cue."

Vette stretches a little to try and see around the jailer, who makes a frankly terrible window. Coming in the far door, a blue-skinned near Human makes his way towards her cage. He looks familiar—not like she's met that many Chiss, let alone Sith-y ones—but she distinctly remembers him being a lot less... half-naked. Everybody's got their quirks, she supposes.

"Word is you might just become Baras's next apprentice," says the human, arms crossed. "Good luck with that."

"Thank you," says the Chiss with a weirdly deep bow. It's not like the jailer really deserves that kind of respect. 

"Not to mention," the jailer continues, "supposedly you'll be relieving me of this Twi'lek." He jabs a thumb in Vette's direction. "She's a real pain in the neck, just warning you."

"Psh, _who's_ a pain in the neck? I'm the one with the shock collar, bud," Vette points out with a roll of her eyes.

The jailer grimaces, pressing down on the shock control just enough to make her twitch. Asshole. "Consider that a going-away present, Twi'lek. Looks like you might actually be good for something after all." He nods to the Chiss. "This'un is taking you down to the tomb where we caught you."

Vette snorts, crossing her arms. "Nobody can figure out how to activate the tomb statues to open that forbidden cavern, huh? That's gotta be a kick in the pants, askin' me for help." She looks at the Chiss, meeting those creepy glowy eyes. "You got some kinda Sith-y business down in that secret chamber, huh?"

The Chiss blinks, apparently surprised she's talking to him directly. "Yes," he says. "And I'd greatly appreciate your help."

"Eugh, don't bother being pleasant." The human presses the control into the Chiss's gloved palm. "Here, kid. Take the shock control instead. Use it enough, she'll show you the back door to her mother's house."

Not krething likely, but Vette thinks that maybe, judging by the faint unease on the Chiss's face, she might actually have a shot at getting through this without getting fried. "I guess I can play tomb tour guide," Vette says with a dramatic shrug. "Took a lot of work cracking that nut, but if I can do it once, I can definitely do it again." She leans against the bars, looking the Chiss up and down. "But just so we're clear, I am officially on strike when it comes to domestic duties."

The barest hint of a smile plays on the Chiss's lips. "I promise you, I don't need a maid."

Vette cracks a grin. "Huh. Guess things might be lookin' up for me after all." _As if they could get any worse._

The human unlocks her cage, and she's out before the door even swings all the way open. To her relief, the Chiss just slips the collar control into a pouch on his belt. Hopefully her hunch was right after all.

"Lead the way," Vette says cheerfully. "I'll show you the unlocking mechanisms in the tomb and get that big secret door open for you."

The Chiss bows to _her_  then, which is just kriffing weird as all hell. Nice, sure, but weird as hell. "Thank you."

Huh. This might be the beginning of something pretty all right. Maybe. She doesn't exactly have high hopes, but a tiny glimmer of it is sure as shit better than nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, huge thanks to Dear Beta, KathrynShadow, to whom—coincidentally—both Shirenne and Rifith belong. I've somewhat belatedly dubbed her co-author, since I'm stealing so many of her children to build this monster.   
> Questions, comments, concerns? I'd love to hear any thoughts either in the comments or over at my Tumblr, @lordvitya, or via carrier pigeon, if that's more your jam.


	3. Interlude - No. 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You no longer have names."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hiii thereeee KS here to tell you that I'm a big old liar and I am actually doing a bit of writing for this. meet our Agents they're great

Enonn recognized one other person in her unit, and it was one more person than she had expected.

It was a small group, which made sense; even with the sheer number of Intelligence-affiliated personnel that she’d spotted in her previous interactions with the Empire, it was still meant to be an elite group. There wouldn’t be many trainees, even considering that half the graduates—as the disapproving tone of the human at their orientation was informing them—would end up in relatively inglorious roles. Most of them would become Fixers. It was likely, he droned on as he shot a glance at the Chiss and her company, that there wouldn’t be a single Cipher among them.

(Pessimistically, Enonn wondered if the human looked their way because the powers that be had shoved all of the aliens together instead of dividing them evenly between the all-human squads… but she didn’t dwell on it. If it was true, whoever came up with the idea would only be proven wrong more thoroughly.)

They didn’t speak then. Enonn met the other Chiss’s eyes for a second. She couldn't nod without breaking form, but she blinked slowly, and he blinked back.

* * *

The training was of the sort clearly designed to root out anyone who had even the smallest bit of hesitation, who was even slightly unfit for Intelligence work. Fair enough; Enonn didn't expect anything else, and she found in it a welcome familiarity. Her training in the CEDF had been much the same—if, in her opinion, better organized.

It did mean, however, that she didn't get a chance to actually speak with her fellow Ascendancy export until a couple of months after she first spotted him. She didn't even have a bunkmate, just another layer of the way they tried to drill an independence into her that she had already learned. Often, she ate when she had a few minutes to herself outside of the wordless drills and false missions; the mess was a room she only saw as she passed it by, or as she wolfed down something generically tasteless in the dead of night. She’d never liked talking while showering. Hallways were not for conversation. Two of her squadmates silently dropped out and disappeared and she’d never spoken a word to either of them.

But. At last, the remaining beings had passed some unspoken test of determination (or perhaps just stubbornness), and the drills began to take on a more cooperative form. The second time Enonn saw the other Chiss since the CEDF was because they were being assigned to each other for the next phase of their training.

She suspected their shared species had something to do with it, but for once, she didn’t consider it such a bad thing. Enonn slipped through the medley of tired-eyed mostly-humans to find him, giving him a small smile when she did.

_ “Lezviye’non’nuruodo, isn’t it?” _ he asked in Cheunh (probably out of spite, if she had to guess), an easy grin on his lips. His Basic was smoothly accented and purely Dromund Kaas, but his Cheunh held a distinct twang of the Csaplar underbelly. She hadn’t recognized his family name when she saw it; she supposed that would certainly explain why.

_ “Alkaev’ari’nuruodo,” _ she returned with a laugh.  _ “I thought I’d never hear my name pronounced correctly again.” _

He snickered.  _ “Do you want me to say it again?” _

Enonn strongly considered taking him up on it, but they were both called to attention before she could say another word.

* * *

Their partnership was not as brief as she thought it would be. It was intended to be a temporary thing for the exercises ahead of them; many of their fellows ended up re-paired after the initial partners had particularly vicious clashes, and all such arrangements were dissolved altogether by the time the remaining ensigns were fully entered into Imperial Intelligence.

But Varin and Enonn remained. They worked well together, but more importantly they  _ worked _ ; they didn’t waste time fretting about the other one, nor did their performance suffer at all when they had to go solo. Enonn assumed it was a matter of their previous semi-association in the CEDF—even if they had never exchanged more than a few words with each other, they had both been part of the same machine, and they still acted as though they were.

She liked him, anyway. She wasn’t about to complain.

* * *

“You no longer have names. You will answer only to Cipher Nine.”

Enonn waited for the follow-up, any additional codename. When none seemed forthcoming, she gave a quiet, “Sir?”

Keeper glanced at her. “Both of you, yes. An unorthodox method, but the best that I feel is available to us, given how deeply the infiltration runs. As far as anyone outside this room knows, there is only one Cipher Nine, and I would prefer that we keep it that way.”

“Yes, sir.” Enonn could hear Varin at her side, echoing the words, but she didn’t pay much mind to it.

Making Cipher was an honor, no matter how  _ unorthodox _ the promotion was. Still, the implications were… troubling. So was everything else about this entire situation, but this was different.

Codenames within codenames, a single identity kept secret from all but a handful of people within Intelligence itself, the fact that Keeper trusted a pair of agents from the Ascendancy above almost all of his own people—above some people who had literally been bred for Imperial Intelligence, molded into their roles from childhood—

The only way this could end was badly. Enonn just hoped it would be worse for everyone who wasn’t them.


	4. In the Cradle You're Helpless, but on Our Feet We Are Fatal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a life is taken, and Vasili finally makes a proper friend.

The jailer actually lets Vette have her blasters, which is the surprise of the century even if it does only happen after a lot of convincing from the Sith. And the fact that the _Sith_ is the one who's cool with giving her those blasters back is just icing on the cake. He seems, from the small impression she's gotten so far, pretty laid-back all around. Not all that talkative, at least until they get outside the Academy, but hey, any words he doesn't say are words that aren't slinging insults at her like everyone else on this stupid planet.

"So," Vette ventures as they step out into the sunlight, "I gotta admit, I've never seen any Chiss Sith. What's your deal?"

He glances at her, confused. "My deal?" 

"You know, your deal," Vette says, gesturing vaguely. "Like, there's not that many of you, right? How does that happen?"

He pauses, a very slight frown pinching his features. "A lot of very bad luck," he says eventually. 

...Fair enough. Disappointing as hell answer, but fair enough. "I'm not gonna get any more than that, am I?"

The Sith gives her a weak little smile. "Maybe later," he says.

Vette doesn't even bother hiding her disappointment that time, wrinkling her nose. The Sith is looking out onto the sand again as they start to walk, so it's not like he can see her face anyways. Unless Chiss eyes are really as weird as some people say, and he can see through the back of his head or something. Probably unlikely. Probably. "Seriously?" she asks.

"Seriously." When he glances over his shoulder at her, the smile has faded, replaced with a dour mix of weariness and resignation. "Maybe later," he says again. "Right now, I just want to survive my trials. Surely you can understand that?"

Vette scrunches up her face further, but doesn't press the issue. "All right, fine. After I get you into this secret chamber thing, you can thank me with storytime and a bottle of booze."

His face softens again, and his glowing eyes crinkle in a grin that he doesn't seem to want to allow himself. "I'll see what I can do."

"You know," Vette says, continuing to talk as they cross the sand, because _fuck_  sand, she doesn't even want to think about how hard it'll be to clean all this grit out of her clothes again, "you seem pretty okay. For a Sith, anyway."

He doesn't look back at her this time, and it takes him a few seconds before he replies. "Have you met many?" he asks.

"I've met enough," Vette says with a snort. "Most of 'em seem to be total asses. But you're okay."

The Sith seems... kind of crestfallen at that, his bare shoulders slumping. He keeps walking, but his steps aren't quite as quick as before. Which is good, in Vette's eyes, because his stride is annoyingly long and it's kind of hard for her to keep up without getting out of breath. "You've only known me for a few minutes," he says eventually, his tone a little firmer. "I could be lying to you to gain your trust."

Vette considers that. "Nah. Pretending to be a nice person would probably be more trouble for you if you were really all Dark Side-y. Not to mention you wouldn't try and prove me wrong by telling me exactly what you were doing."

He does look over his shoulder at her again at that, one eyebrow raised. "Dark Side-y?" he echoes.

"You know, with the..." Vette waves a hand in front of her face. "And the _really_ nasty ones look kinda gross, you know? Yellow eyes and crap skin. You don't look gross, and you're not shocking me right and left like the jailer back there."

He shakes his head, focusing once more on the path ahead of them. They're almost to the tomb, and he seems pretty well determined to be insulted by her calling him an okay person. It was worth a shot, she supposes, but Sith are krething weird. Still, she's not going to take this awkward silence sitting down. 

"Didn't catch your name, by the way," she says, trotting up so that they're walking side by side. 

The Sith glances at her sidelong—or, at least, she assumes he does; the whole lack of pupils thing kind of puts a damper on being able to tell where the hell he's looking—and finally manages a wan smile. "Vasili," he says. "Call me Vasili."

Well, at least _that_  was easy. "You got it," Vette says, with a mock two-fingered salute. That gets Vasili to actually smile like a normal person. Progress. "I'm Vette, by the way. Don't think Jailer Assface ever mentioned it."

Vasili puts a hand to his chest and gives another one of those little bows. "I'm sure it's a pleasure to meet you, Vette," he says. He looks back ahead, towards the mouth of the tomb, his expression sobering. "But let's keep the pleasantries to a minimum for now."

Vette would actually quite like to keep those pleasantries going, because now instead of not thinking about sand she has to not think about the creeping sense of doom that this place sends crawling up her back. She knows it's normal enough for a tomb to feel like death—that's what they're for, after all—but walking into this one feels like dying. The air is stale and cold, a lingering stink of decay permeating everything. 

Vette wrinkles her nose. "Yup, just like I left it," she mutters. "This place is still ultra creepy."

"Please, Vette," hisses Vasili. 

She puts her hands up, but keeps her mouth shut. Honestly, she's pretty sure the creepy crawlies in here respond just as much to sound as they do to movement—and other things that neither of them can help, like heat. But if it makes His Sithyness feel better about his life, she _supposes_  she can bear to be quiet for a few minutes. Besides, as not terrible as she thinks he probably is, it's just generally better for her health not to push any Sith too hard.

For a Sith, Vasili's surprisingly light on his feet, making barely any noise as they make their way deeper and deeper into the tomb. He never seems to blink, his eyes constantly open wide as he watches their surroundings. Maybe that part's just a Chiss thing, though; it's not like Vette knows many of them personally. 

This part of the tomb is still pretty fresh in her mind, so Vette finds the first ridiculous unlocking mechanism—seriously, what kind of melodramatic ass installs this many booby traps and convoluted locks in a glorified mausoleum?—in a matter of minutes. She sticks her tongue out at the crumbling statue even as she fiddles with the latch at its base. Krething Sith monuments and artifacts are more trouble than they're worth, she's decided. 

There's a deafening sound behind her, which Vette tries her damnedest to ignore so she can get the thing unlocked—followed, a little worryingly, by the clear spark of a lightsaber igniting. Vette starts at that, and again at the series of _whoosh_ es and screams that follow, but doggedly keeps tinkering until that familiar _click_  echoes around the chamber. She whirls around to see Vasili fighting back a horde of shyracks and aw _kriff._  

Vette raises both her blasters, pumping the bastards with as many bolts as she can get off without risk of hitting Vasili. That red saber blade cuts through the ones she can't hit with startling intensity, hacking the creatures into pieces that are still sizzling when they hit the ground. It only lasts a few seconds, but Vasili is breathing hard when it ends.

Vasili stares at the dead shyracks for a long moment before finally extinguishing his lightsaber. He glances at Vette. "You didn't have to do that," he says. "Thank you."

Vette shrugs, spinning her blasters before holstering them again. "I'm not about to let you get killed by some flying rats," she says. "I mean, not that I think they'd _actually_  be able to kill you, but I feel like even if you just got scratched up the other Sith would get pissed at me somehow." She grimaces. "Blame the Twi'lek, always blame the Twi'lek."

A smile pulls at Vasili's mouth. "Don't worry about them, Vette. I won't let you take the fall for any failures of mine."

But he's definitely super, super evil. Vette grins. "C'mon," she says. "Let's get you to that super secret evil chamber thing."

One stupid switch down, three to go. Vette and Vasili fall back into a vaguely uncomfortable silence until she trips on the second one—almost literally; the pieces of the half-shattered urn get underfoot and she nearly falls over. Vette kicks a shard out of spite.

"I like a good Corellian whiskey, by the way," Vette says as she fiddles with the switch. "When we get out of here and you take me out for drinks."

Vasili surprises her by laughing. "I'll try to keep that in mind." 

"You'd better. I kriffing hate this place, and a nice whiskey is the only thing that's gonna make this worth it," Vette says firmly.

"Believe me," Vasili says, "I don't have much love for it either." He sighs, and Vette hears the sound of his lightsaber unclipping from his belt. She doesn't hear anything terrible, so she assumes and hopes that he's just getting it out as a precaution. "I've never been in a tomb that felt this... alive, and yet so overcome with death."

"Isn't that kind of what they're for?" Vette asks. She knows what he means, but she's morbidly curious if the creeping feeling up her spine is somehow worse with Force crap.

"I've been in tombs before," Vasili says. "Normal tombs. But they never felt like this. It's as if the walls are alive, but dead at the same time. It's... overwhelming."

Vette winces at that. At least she can't feel the damn walls. Small mercies. The switch _clicks_  like before, and Vette stands up, looking around for the door to the next one. "Were you a graverobber before? Is that it?" she asks.

Vasili shakes his head, pinching the bridge of his nose. "No, Vette. I wasn't a graverobber," he says. "Really, I'll tell you later."

_Ugh_ , fine. Vette huffs, crossing her arms as they make their way to the next switch. ( _Seriously_ , who is this paranoid about people breaking into their tomb after they're long gone? Who even cares what happens to their stuff when they're dead? Kriffing Sith.)

The next one, to Vette's eternal dismay, is tucked inside an old, crumbling sarcophagus, and she has to reach around its bony occupant to get to it. Doing her best not to think too hard about what she's touching, she gets all up in the skeleton's business so she can actually activate the damn thing. 

She's really starting to feel the effects of the tomb now; exhaustion has started creeping into her legs, and there's a sense of impending doom she just can't seem to shake. Trying, and failing, to ignore that, Vette leads Vasili down yet more dark, dank corridors into another familiar room. There's a huge stone box tucked against one wall, which, if Vette's not mistaken, has the last krething switch in it. Bone fragments crunching under her boots that she desperately tries to ignore, she makes her way over, Vasili standing guard at her back while she unlocks it.

"Last one," she says, wiping her hands on her pants. "Thank the stars for that."

He doesn't say anything, but judging by the look on his face, Vasili seems to agree. 

Eventually, they find themselves in a wide, open chamber. Bones litter the floor, and it smells, to her, like nearly getting to the prize she's been tracking down for weeks and then getting yanked away by some krething asshole with bad skin and a worse haircut. Very specific smell, that.

"Okay," she says. "This is it. The secret entrance is somewhere in here... just lemme get my bearings..."

Vette looks at the giant wall of solid stone in front of her, squinting. Yeah, this looks about right. She hears Vasili step forward behind her to stand guard while she gets this stupid thing figured out. Stars, this relic or whatever the hell it is he's looking for had better be worth it.

She runs her hands across the rock, feeling for strange divots, when—

"Vette, get down!" Vasili shouts, his lightsaber sparking to life.

Vette spins to see an ugly, pale human with a mess of scars across the whole left side of his face, vibroblade raised and his face twisted in a mask of rage. He brings the blade down on Vasili, who blocks with his saber and tries to push him back. 

"This ends _here,"_ snarls the human, holding his blade out in front of him. "Once you're dead, the Twi'lek slave will show me the forbidden chamber, and I will bring that lightsaber to Lord Baras and take _my_  rightful place as his apprentice."

Vasili steps a slow, careful circle around the human—forcing him to face him, and away from Vette, she realizes. "Please, Vemrin," he says, drawing his second blade. His face is impassive, but his tone is pleading. "I don't want to fight you, but if I must..." There is a grim resolve in the set of his jaw. "I will kill you if I have to."

"No you won't," Vemrin snaps. "I've seen how you work. I am the true essence of what it means to be Sith. You? You're weak, soft. You're _nothing._ " His face twists, impossibly making him even uglier than before. "My legacy has suffered long enough. And after today, I will be remembered as the greatest student to leave the Academy—and you will be _forgotten_ , just another pathetic alien from a pathetic planet, left to rot and crumble into dust."

Oh, Vette does _not_  like this one. This one can go shove that vibroblade right where the sun doesn't shine. 

Vemrin rushes Vasili with a cry. Vasili buckles slightly as he blocks, eyes wide at the strength of the strike. He shoves Vemrin back with both blades and hammering at him with desperate, almost wild blows. They lock into a brutal dance, stepping in almost perfect time as their blades strike again and again and again. 

Vasili is almost completely silent, his face schooled into dead-eyed determination now. Vemrin strikes; Vasili blocks and parries, and the pattern starts again. He's playing some kind of long game, trying to wear Vemrin out.

But Vemrin seems to realize this at the same time as Vette. His form changes, switching to small slashes and jabs. Vasili falters, unsure of how to counter such a sudden shift.

Vemrin grins like a predator and slashes once, striking Vasili across the face with the edge of his blade. 

Vasili stumbles back, eyes screwed shut for one horrible second. He turns his head as he defends, and Vette sees a thick gash, dripping blood, from his forehead to his right cheekbone. 

That kriffing tears it. Vette unholsters her blasters, leveling them at the bastard's head. She squeezes the trigger, but he notices her just in time, the bolt hitting his blade instead and ricocheting into the wall behind her head. Vemrin snarls at her, his focus torn away from Vasili for a split second.

"If I die, I'm gonna haunt you!" Vette yells, firing off another round of bolts as the angry Sith starts moving in towards her.

"I won't kill you, slave," Vemrin hisses. "But I will cut out that tongue of yours."

Distracted by the rush of blaster fire, Vemrin doesn't— _can't_ react in time when Vasili's second blade swipes his legs, shredding through his thin armor and sending him crashing to the ground. His vibroblade skids across the chamber floor as he grips his torn flesh. 

Vemrin looks up at Vasili with a wild fire in his eyes, like a wounded animal backed into a corner. Vasili clips his second blade to his belt, but his lightsaber remains ignited, thrumming horribly and bathing the whole chamber in crimson light. He wipes the blood from his eye with his free hand. 

"No..." Vemrin groans. "Becoming Baras's apprentice was my destiny. Have I really come so far, to fall to _you_?"

Vasili looks down at him with equal parts pity and disgust. "You fought well," he says through ragged, heavy breaths. "Give yourself time to heal, and perhaps the Overseers will give you another shot."

Vemrin growls, pushing himself up just far enough to spit in Vasili's face. "I don't want your pity, subhuman scum. Dying would be better than coming back with my tail between my legs, begging for a second chance." He screws his eyes shut, falling back to the ground. "Just kill me. Get it over with. Maybe then you can pretend you were ever worthy of becoming Sith."

Vasili wipes the spittle and blood away with the back of his hand. Closing his eyes, he raises his blade and lets it fall, severing Vemrin's head cleanly from his shoulders. Vette shivers.

"Friend of yours?" she asks, trying to inject a little levity into the situation.

Vasili looks over at her with exhaustion in his eyes before wiping away yet more blood, bright red smearing across the deep blue of his skin. "No," he says. "Old rival."

Vette looks down at the decapitated body, trying and failing to reconcile the smiling Vasili from barely an hour ago with the Vasili who just cut someone's head off with his eyes closed. Maybe she's not so great at reading people after all. 

"I think I've got some kolto on me," Vette says, taking a step towards him. "If, uh, you think that might help..."

Vasili looks at her for a moment, then shakes his head. "I'll be fine. Let's just... get the lightsaber and get out of here."

In Vette's personal opinion, people who'll be fine aren't generally bleeding that much, and definitely not that close to their kriffing eyes, but maybe he's got some kind of Force crap that protects him from infection or something. She doesn't pretend to know how that stuff works. Shrugging, she turns back to the slab of rock, running her palms around where she'd left off before that Vemrin guy showed up. Somewhere along this thing, there'll be some sort of indentation, which she has to press, and that'll open up a big door to the goods. 

She hopes so, anyway.

"A- _ha!_ " Vette whoops without thinking as she shoves her finger into the rock, which gives an altogether satisfying _click_  before the whole slab of wall starts to shudder and shift. She backpedals as fast as she can without tripping down the steps and watches the door split open, fascinated by it despite how much all this Sith crap annoys her. Grinning, she crosses her arms and glances sidelong at Vasili. "You're _welcome_."

Vasili stares ahead for a long moment, his eyes blank, before he seems to remember himself. He turns to look at her, and manages a smile as he extinguishes his lightsaber and clips it back to his belt. "You've been most helpful, Vette. Thank you."

Okay, so maybe—hopefully—there's a little spot of hope for him _not_  being a cold-blooded killer. Cold-blooded killers, in her experience, don't thank their slaves this much. "It's nice to be acknowledged," she says, biting her tongue on those thoughts for now. "Thanks."

They pass through another wide corridor, which branches off into three more openings—two leading into massive open chambers, the other of which seems to have caved in ages ago. Kriff, this is as far as Vette had ever gotten before; despite the dread coiled up in her chest, she wants so badly to pore over everything and see what's worth stealing. But she forces herself to just look ahead, and maybe, _maybe_  loot whatever's in the super-secret chamber while Vasili's occupied with his lightsaber. 

Apparently sensing where they need to go, Vasili takes point and walks with measured stride through the opening to the right. As she steps past the threshold, Vette feels a deep chill settle into her chest. She swallows, trying to ignore it, but something about this place makes her want to just turn heel and bolt, consequences be damned.

There's a straight pathway leading to the end of the chamber, to what looks like a massive stone sarcophagus on a crumbling dais. On either side of the path, there are about three dozen statues, posed either to mimic combat or to stand guard, and almost all of them starting to crack and decay. Illuminating it all is a pair of stone torches about three times Vette's size, lit with a pale violet fire that has no right to still be burning.

Vette would very much like to go now.

Vasili seems strangely unaffected—or else he's just good at faking it—his stride unchanged as he marches up to the dais. Vette reluctantly follows on his heels, though she stays back a few meters once he gets anywhere near the sarcophagus. It feels a lot safer back here, for some reason. She keeps her hands on her blasters, in case those creepy statues start moving—not that a blaster bolt is going to do much against solid rock, but it makes her feel better, dammit. 

For a few seconds, she keeps her eyes on the statues, on the gaping door to the reliquary, but she can't help but glance back when she hears the shuddering groan of the sarcophagus opening. At first, she thinks whatever Sith Lord is in there has decided to come back from the dead and attack them personally—but no, it's Vasili, hefting the massive stone lid with the Force, muscles visibly straining with the effort before he pushes it aside and lets it drop with a dull _thud._  Vette takes a couple tentative steps backward to get a better look at what he's doing, craning her neck so as to look inside.

"I think that guy's seen better days," Vette whispers, wrinkling her nose at the grinning skeleton within. Considering how damn long the corpse must have been in there, she's begrudgingly impressed at how well-preserved it is, but honestly, something about that just makes it worse. She'd much rather there be nothing but a pile of evil dust in there, not something still half-recognizable as having been an actual person. 

At least Vasili seems just as grossed out by the body as Vette is; rather than reaching in and taking the lightsaber, he simply extends a hand and pulls it toward himself with the Force. He turns it over in his hand a few times, almost like he's appraising it. He glances back at the skeleton, and then back at Vette. "No kidding," he says quietly. He takes in a deep breath as he clips the saber to his belt, raising his hands towards the lid again. "Let's not disturb his rest further, hm?" 

His arms shaking, Vasili lifts the slab of stone once more, pulling it up and over the open sarcophagus. More gently than Vette personally thinks is necessary, he lowers it until it's as if he'd never opened the thing at all. 

"Some sort of Sith superstition?" Vette says as Vasili starts walking back down the steps. "Disturb a dead guy's tomb and he comes after you?"

Vasili blinks at her, then shrugs. "I just prefer to leave things the way I found them if I can help it," he says. "Although—" 

There's a brief flash of violet light from behind them. Something creaks and groans, and Vette spins on her heels, leveling her blasters at the sarcophagus—but the slab hasn't moved. Feeling her heart pounding despite herself, Vette turns back to the door.

The statues begin to move.

"...although your theory might have something behind it too," Vasili finishes, drawing both his lightsabers and igniting them. "Get behind me, Vette."

"You got it!" Vette says, all too happy to stand behind the guy holding things that actually have half a chance of damaging these stone monstrosities.

One statue explodes in a cloud of dust and debris, throwing them both back with the force of the blast. When the dust clears, where there had been stone now stands a lumbering, armored corpse, clothes and flesh tattered, its skull cracked to expose its rotting brain. Vette's stomach turns.

Vasili leaps forward, leaving Vette standing alone on the dais. A yell of protest dies in her throat as he moves, the heat of his sabers slicing through the zombie's joints almost as if they were nothing. Another statue bursts, revealing another corpse—and another, and another, and another, until every statue in the chamber is dust and all that's left is a crowd of walking corpses.

One swings a massive staff to strike him across the head. He blocks it and pushes back, hooking his blade around to sever through its elbow, and then its torso. The thicker flesh is slower to cut, leaving Vasili to block with one lightsaber while he sears through the corpse with the other. A corpse advances for his right side, its feet slamming heavily on the ground. It raises its weapon, but with blood still trickling into his eye, he can't see it in time. 

Vette doesn't even give herself time to think. She bolts forward, hurling herself at the thing and slamming the butt of her blaster into its exposed brain again and again and again until it turns to so much mush. Its knees buckle, and it falls to the ground. Vasili glances at her only briefly before he turns back to the other undead, but it would be hard to miss the fear and gratitude in those eyes.

Back-to-back they fight, Vette's blaster bolts blowing out what's left of the creatures' brains, Vasili's sabers slicing through what's left of their bodies.

A zombie tries to take a swing at Vette. She yells, ducking, and her heart catches in her throat for half a second before Vasili whirls on it, blocking the blow with one saber and cutting through both its legs with the other. When it falls, Vette puts a few bolts through its face for good measure. Another strikes Vasili in the side. Vette lets out a cry and kicks the thing in the gut, filling its chest and skull with blaster fire until it falls.

It could have been seconds or hours; Vette has no idea. At long last, though, with a massive sweep of both blades, Vasili cuts through four of the bastards at once, and the last of the corpses falls to the ground, finally, finally dead for good. Breathing hard, bloodied and bruised, Vasili turns to look at Vette. 

"Thank you," he says. He offers a weak smile. "You seem to be getting into a habit of saving my life, you know."

Vette shrugs as she puts away her blasters. "Hey, somebody's gotta look after you."

* * *

The walk back to the Academy feels magnitudes longer than the walk to the tomb had been. Vasili tries to shrug off Vette's concerns for his wounds—he'll patch himself up after they go back to Baras, he says; they'll heal on their own, he says—but even he can't deny that he's the only thing slowing himself down. Yet, at the same time, the pace of their journey back is almost reassuring, an excuse to steel himself before returning to his master once more. 

Vasili doesn't speak through the whole trek; he focuses on breathing, on the sound of sand beneath his boots, on the heat pressing down on his bloodied back. Anything other than the smell of centuries-old cadavers left to rot in stone, still fresh in his nostrils, or the ache of what he's sure must be at least a few fractured ribs. Vette goes silent in turn—Vasili doesn't question her reasoning, though he suspects it's at least similar to his own.

At least he knows that his master will be pleased this time.

When they reach the threshold of the Academy, Vette finally breaks the silence. "As places of higher learning go, this one has _got_  to be the scariest." 

Vasili startles himself with his own laughter, weak and breathless as it is. That Vette can manage to crack even the smallest joke after staring into the face of death itself is... admirable, in a way. He wishes he had that sort of resolve. Vette flashes a quick smile at him, starting to elbow him in the side before yanking her arm back, apparently remembering his injuries. 

"Whoops, sorry," she says, rubbing at the back of her neck, just below the shock collar. "Not gonna re-break any ribs today."

Vasili chuckles again and shakes his head. "No harm done," he assures her. 

Vette gives him a gentle pat on an unscratched part of his shoulder instead as they walk inside. The tension thrumming in the air here is almost a relief after the creeping terror of the tombs. It's familiar, in ways Vasili wished it wasn't—and even more so he wishes he didn't find himself breathing easier within its walls.

He drags himself up the stairs to Baras's office, unclipping the ancient saber from his belt as he passes through the door, Vette following a few steps behind. Baras stands in front of his desk, hands clasped in front of him. Vasili bows to him, holding out the saber with both hands.

"I am _beside_  myself," Darth Baras says. Vasili hears the delight in his master's voice, and lets out a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding. "Not only did you get the Twi'lek to cooperate, you completed your task and claimed the ancient lightsaber." Vasili straightens, lightsaber still slightly outstretched. Baras continues, ignoring him. "Vemrin was not in my chamber as I had instructed him. I take it he attempted to sabotage you, and claim the weapon for himself."

Vasili inclines his head. "He ambushed me, master. I tried to reason with him—" inasmuch as he could be reasoned with, he adds silently—"but in the end, I was forced to kill him."

A chuckle rattles behind Baras's mask. "Bravo," he says. "You may indeed become one of the strongest Sith in the galaxy yet." He inclines his head back, as if to look down his nose at Vasili. "Your trials are over. You are now truly my apprentice."

Vasili drops to one knee, heart in his throat. "I am your humble servant, master," he says, his gaze kept to the floor. "I bow before you." Behind him, Vette makes a quiet noise of displeasure. For a moment, he panics—if she gets one or both of them hurt or killed because she doesn't like the fact he risks severe punishment if he doesn't honor the chain of command—

"Rise, my apprentice," Baras declares. Heart still hammering, Vasili obeys, trying to suppress his fear and praying that Baras, by some miracle, doesn't sense it. "This is only the beginning. With you at my side, we shall strike terror into the Empire's enemies." He turns, searching through his desk for a brief moment. "I must convene with the Emperor, and inform him of your progress." When Baras faces Vasili again, there is a small datapad in his hand, which he holds out to Vasili. "This shuttle pass will take you to Dromund Kaas. You will meet me at the citadel in Kaas City."

Vasili bows once more at the waist. "As you decree, my lord." This time, at least, Vette doesn't make a sound.

Baras gestures to Vette. "Take the Twi'lek slave as my gift," he continues. "You may do with her as you wish. If you believe she might be of any use, by all means, take her with you to Dromund Kaas." He nods to the shuttle pass in Vasili's hand. "She has been officially registered as your property—the personnel operating the shuttle will give you no trouble for her."

Nausea twists in Vasili's stomach as he bows again. "Thank you, master. You are most generous." He turns to Vette, who looks about as sick as Vasili feels. "Come on," he tells her. "Let's go."

The silence with which Vette follows him out of the Academy is of a wholly different kind than before—when they had come back to the Academy, she seemed as exhausted and shellshocked as he had been. Now, her sense is one of barely-swallowed bitterness, and Vasili feels a cold stab of guilt in his chest. They walk without a single word shared for nearly an hour to the shuttle, nor as they board, nor, even, as the shuttle breaks atmo.

They dock at a massive space station—the hub of the Imperial Fleet, the pilot explains—so that the small ship can refuel and resupply before the slightly longer flight to Dromund Kaas. 

"It'll be a few hours yet, milord," says the pilot, bowing so low that Vasili thinks for a moment his forehead might touch his knees. "We'll call your comlink when we're getting ready to board again. In the meantime, you're free to enjoy yourself—there's quite a few shops here, not to mention a decent bar, if you fancy that sort of thing."

"Thank you," Vasili says, and the pilot bows again before turning to hook up the fuel pumps.

As Vasili and Vette walk out of the docking bay, Vette finally breaks the silence. "You owe me a drink," she points out quietly. She nods towards the wide cantina at the center of the station.

Vasili turns to look, then gives her a wan smile. "I think I owe you a few after all that," he says. "Corellian whiskey, right?"

Vette's expression brightens at that. "Good memory," she says, walking towards the cantina with just a bit more of a spring in her step.

They both take a seat at one of the satellite tables a few meters away from the actual bar. A human male approaches them, completely ignoring Vette as he asks Vasili's preferences. He seems remarkably blasé about the presence of a half-naked Chiss in the cantina, which is just as well, honestly.

"Corellian whiskey for her," Vasili says, gesturing to Vette. "And, uh..." He frowns, realizing at that exact moment that he has no idea what's available or, more importantly, what he even likes. "And the same for me."

The human seems surprised, but he doesn't remark on it. He takes a glance at the sabers at Vasili's belt, and bows. "Of course, my lord. Would you like to open a tab, or...?"

Vasili bites his lip a moment, then shakes his head. "Three of the..." He sighs, the word in Basic not coming to him at all. "The small glasses?" he says, making a vague cup shape with his hands. "That should do for now." He sees Vette wrinkle her nose at that. "Thank you."

The human bows to him and leaves. Vette lets out a long sigh. "I wouldn't have complained if you just opened a tab, you know," she says.

Vasili glances at her sidelong. "I'm sure you wouldn't," he says, "but I'd really rather not be scraping you off the floor when we have to leave."

She rolls her eyes at that. "You wouldn't be scraping me off the floor," she argues. "Believe me, I can hold my liquor better than most of the people here probably can."

Before Vasili can say anything further, the human comes back with glasses that are absolutely _not_  the size Vasili was thinking, and places all three in front of him. "Do not hesitate to let me know if there is anything further you require, my lord," says the human, inclining his head.

"Of course," Vasili says. "Thank you again."

"My lord." The human bows one last time before turning away.

Vasili immediately slides two of the glasses in Vette's direction, more than a little wary of their volume. While they're not large by any means, they also aren't terribly small. Vette, for her part, seems to have none of his misgivings, and immediately tosses back a somewhat frightening amount.

"Oh, that is the _stuff_ ," Vette says, clearing her throat. She looks at Vasili, cracking a lopsided grin. "Thanks for that."

"I did say I owed you, didn't I?" Vasili says.

"You did," Vette answers cheerfully. "Y'know, on a related note... I've been thinking. Maybe you could..." She points to the back of her neck. "I dunno, take this off? As a thank-you for all that hard work I did back on Korriban?" She looks back down at the table and takes another gulp from her glass. "Not that I don't enjoy the perpetual fear of electrocution, of course."

Vasili pushes back his chair and stands, crouching behind her. "Of course," he says. He grimaces as he undoes the cruel fasteners keeping the collar attached. "I'm only sorry it didn't happen any sooner."

Vette lowers her head to make it easier for him to get to it. "Hell, I feel kind of stupid for not just _asking_  sooner. Thanks."

As Vasili pries it off, he says, "In your defense, I don't know if I had the authority to do this before." The metal peels away from her neck, exposing reddened, inflamed skin beneath. Stars above...

Vette doesn't even seem to notice the damage. She turns, looking at the collar as Vasili drops it on the table in disgust. "I'll try not to give you any reason to slap that thing back on me again," she says, her tone light but her eyes still slightly wary. 

"Neither the collar nor your slavery were my idea at all," Vasili says as he sits back down. He takes his glass in hand and brings it to his lips. The whiskey burns like nothing he's ever had on the way down, and he has to stop himself from choking on it as he swallows. Vette puts a hand to her mouth, clearly trying not to laugh and failing horribly. Vasili ignores that in the hopes that he can preserve his own dignity a little. "I really am sorry that that thing stayed on as long as it did."

Vette smiles, but there's little humor in it now. She takes another drink, finishing off the first glass. It's rather remarkable, in a horrible way, how quickly she can down that stuff. "So... what happens now? Does this mean I'm not your slave anymore?"

Vasili grimaces at that. "I'd hoped that much was obvious," he says. "Where I come from, we don't have slaves in the first place. So... if you come to Dromund Kaas with me, I'd rather it be as a friend."

"Uh." Vette blinks, then gives a dramatic shrug. "Sure, why not? Me and my buddy the Sith. Nobody's gonna pick on me at school." 

Vasili can't help but laugh. "Definitely not," he says. "I've got your back if you've got mine. Deal?" He extends a hand to her.

Vette stares down at it for a few seconds, then grins at him. "Deal," she says, taking his hand in a much stronger grip than he would have guessed from such a slight being, and shakes it twice. "And _speaking_  of deals, didn't you say you were going to tell me about where you came from?"

Vasili pauses as he draws his hand back, swirling the liquid around in his glass. "All right." Vette props her chin on her fists, scooting her seat forward. "I was born in Csaplar, the capitol city of the Chiss Ascendancy," he begins.

* * *

Cold. Biting, piercing, all-encompassing cold. Two boys huddled together, alone. Father gone before they could form memories, leaving a family fallen and disgraced. Mother, vanished without a trace. With no inheritance, no name, no family to protect them, there was little choice for them to do but to take to the streets. Without one another, they had nothing.

They took turns finding food and finding shelter. One night spent in an abandoned warehouse, another in a library, another in an alley, pressed against a generator for warmth through the night. Every single day, the shadow of starvation and the specter of a frozen death loomed over them. Two boys, small for their age, alone in a city of ice. They should not have survived. 

And yet they did.

Years passed. Boys became men, and men became soldiers, taken in by the military, adopted into new families. They were well-received, well-liked by their peers and superiors. One was taken to perform research on colony worlds, to study their histories. The other found his fulfillment in special operations and stealth work. For the first time in so many years, they had a home again. All was well.

But it did not last. There was an accident; a collapsed tunnel on another ice world, so similar to the world on which the boys had been born. It was meant to be a simple expedition, a sign to the foreign military stationed there that he was an ally to be trusted. They were to take him in, train him as one of their own, utilize his natural tolerance to the cold, and in turn let him study them and the world they occupied. A single misstep changed everything.

Days passed after the cave-in. Search parties were retracted, the members of the expedition declared dead. If the cold had not killed them, they would naturally have suffocated after a day. No one could have survived.

The soldier came back—alone, hungry and weak. His comrades, he said, were dead. When questioned, he did not know how he survived.

 

* * *

"I learned later that I had been using the Force," Vasili says quietly. "My whole life, without realizing it—sustaining myself, keeping myself warm, and then, when I thought I was surely going to die..." He lifts his empty glass with a movement of his hand, turning it with the Force. "I used it to dig myself out. I was so scared, I didn't even realize what I was _doing_. I just knew that I didn't want to die."

Vette has been silent through the whole story, her expression growing more and more somber. 

"Force sensitivity isn't looked on the same way in the Ascendancy as it is in the Empire," Vasili continues. "Here, it's a gift, a path to glory. Back home, it's... it's a blight, a shame on your family. Of course, I barely had a family anymore, but what I had—" He sighs. "I was kept in confinement for weeks while they figured out what was to be done with me. The moment a Sith stepped onto that base, my people handed me over." He lowers the glass back onto the table. Vette wordlessly hands him what remains of her own. "He took me to Korriban, to train in one of the satellite Academies when I barely knew a word of Basic. If I spoke my own tongue, I was punished."

Vasili gratefully drinks the rest of the whiskey. "I was a fast learner, at least," he says. "The rest... the rest is history."

"Damn," Vette says quietly. She opens her mouth to say more, but Vasili's comlink interrupts her with a loud, persistent beep.

Vasili unclips it from his belt, and the small figure of their shuttle pilot appears. "My lord, we are ready for takeoff and will begin boarding in ten standard minutes to depart en route to Dromund Kaas. All due respect, I suggest you finish whatever remaining business you have and come back to the docking bay."

"Understood," Vasili says, nodding. The pilot bows, and the communication cuts out. Vasili looks to Vette. "I suppose we have a shuttle to catch."

"Looks that way," Vette agrees. She stands up, staring down at her discarded shock collar for a moment, as if she only just realized it was still there. "Uh, what do you want to do with this thing?"

Vasili looks at it and then gives a shrug. "Whatever you want," he says. "Toss it in a trash compactor, break it apart for scrap, melt it down... whatever gives you closure, Vette. You're free now."

Vette grins, scooping the collar up off the table and slipping it in her pack. "Yes _sir_ ," she says.

The latter half of the trip to Dromund Kaas is a long one—about an hour into their flight, Vette falls asleep, snoring lightly as she leans against Vasili's shoulder. As much as he tries to stay awake and watch the stars rushing past, the exhaustion of the past few days has finally caught up to him, and his eyelids start to turn heavy shortly after.

He dreams of ice and fire and fear.

 

* * *

Vette only wakes up when the shuttle touches ground on Dromund Kaas, rattling all its passengers so soundly that there's no way anyone short of a dead person could sleep through the landing. (Although, considering her recent experience with dead people, maybe even that's not so true.) She pushes herself off Vasili's shoulder, watching him until he comes to on his own. Red eyes still bleary, he blinks and shields his face from the light of the planet outside as the shuttle door opens.

"Welcome to Dromund Kaas, I guess," Vette says as she hops down and off the ramp. "Bit... bleak, isn't it? Not a lot of color."

Vasili walks so he's just a step in front of her—gotta keep from upsetting the status quo, she supposes, not without bitterness. He shrugs. "It's better than sand," he points out. 

Vette snorts. "Point taken."

Vasili flags down a taxi speeder when they get out of the spaceport and into the jungle outside, Vette holding back to stay out of the pouring rain, thank you very much. Not that that lasts, of course, but she at least gets to stay dry until the speeder pulls up. And of course it doesn't have any kind of roof, because the universe hates her sometimes.

The rain is almost unbearable the whole way into the city, pelting her face as they fly over the trees. "So," she yells, trying to make her voice heard over the wind and rain. "You ever been here before?"

Vasili shakes his head. "The only planets I've ever been are Ascendancy worlds, Hoth, and Korriban. This place is new to me."

And Vette had been hoping he might know where the kriff they're going. Too much to ask, she supposes. She sits in damp silence for the rest of the ride, staring out over the side of the speeder to watch the jungle rush by below. The ride isn't too terribly long, at least—something to be said, albeit begrudgingly, for Imperial efficiency; they apparently apply the same principles to their vehicles that they do to their armies. Gotta keep everything running fast and smooth.

They land, thank the stars, on a covered platform, on one of the city center's main towers. Vette swallows as she stares into the place. Even more Sith to deal with. Hooray.

Apparently sensing her unease, Vasili turns after he climbs out of the speeder. "You can wait outside if you like, Vette," he says. "I understand if you'd rather not come along."

"You are the _best,_ " Vette says, practically jumping out of the taxi and stopping just short of hugging him. "Yeah, I'll be out here. You have fun with Darth Weird-ass, yeah?"

Vasili blinks at her, very slowly. "Fun. Right." He shakes his head. "I'll try not to be long."

Vette waves as he makes his way inside. When he's no longer in sight, she starts wandering around the platform, watching all the other beings milling about. She's the only Twi'lek she can see; most of the others walking around are human Imperials in different uniforms, or human Sith, or human slaves of Sith. She shivers, making her way to an unoccupied bench far, far away from the door to the citadel. 

Someone behind her clears their throat. "Afternoon, miss," says a voice—male, probably, and smooth like honey. Vette jumps, hands on her blasters. "Sorry, sorry, didn't mean to startle you. I just couldn't help but notice those gorgeous blasters you've got."

Gorgeous blasters, huh? Is that what the kids are calling them these days? Annoyed, Vette turns to get a good look at whoever this is. "Look, you creep, I'm _really_  not interested, especially if you're gonna call 'em _blasters._ "

Behind her stands a tall figure, clothed in a longcoat, the lower half of his face obscured by what almost looks like a gas mask. What she can see of his face is dark blue skin and bright red, glowing eyes, which are crinkled in a smile. 

"You misunderstand me, miss," he says, stepping around the bench and sitting down on the arm with a grace that does not match the sheer level of discomfort he has to be feeling on that thing. "Your _blasters,_ " he continues, gesturing at the holsters at her hips. "AC-27s, am I correct? I've not had the chance to see a set in person, so this is quite an occasion for me. If I may...?"

Oh. Feeling more than a little sheepish, Vette pulls one of her blasters out of its holster. She doesn't hand it off to the guy—she's not stupid—but she does let him have a good look.

"Magnificent," he breathes. "A work of art, don't you think? You clearly take exceptional care of them."

"You a collector or something?" Vette asks, putting the blaster back in its holster and crossing her arms.

"Of a kind, yes," the stranger replies, eyes still crinkled in a grin. He shifts, sitting down on the bench proper but keeping a respectful distance from Vette. "You clearly have a good eye—at least, for excellent armaments. Might I ask your name, miss?"

What the hell. It's not like she's ever gonna see this guy again. "Vette," she says. "Name's Vette."

The stranger keeps grinning, even as he reaches behind his head to unclip the mask from his face. "Do forgive me," he says. "I had this on for an assignment and forgot to take it off." He cards a hand through his hair as he places the mask on the bench, and the face that looks up at Vette after is an absolute spitting image of the Sith she's decided to throw her lot in with. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Vette," he says, extending his hand. "My name is Alkaev'ari'nuruodo. I was hoping we might be able to make a deal."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the brief absence, all! (And by 'brief' I mean... like, a month.) I was in a car accident a few weeks ago and it royally screwed up my shoulder. I've been in a sling for a long while, as well as taking painkillers after work which leave me more than a little dopey, and that isn't exactly conducive to writing serious things.  
> Huge, huge thanks to Dearest Beta/Dearest Coauthor KathrynShadow for picking up my slack last update, and for looking over this monster of a chapter. <3 Consider the sheer mass of this one an apology for my being away!  
> As always, I live for your comments, which you can drop here or over at my Tumblr @lordvitya. See you in a couple weeks!


	5. Keep Your Soul Above the Ocean Floor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a deal is considered, and Vette (maybe) makes a friend.

The moment Vasili sets foot in the Sith Sanctum, he finds himself face-to-face with a ferret-like human male, hands folded in front of him as he blocks the way.

"You are the apprentice Lord Baras sent for, yes?" the man asks, his voice shrill and simpering. "The gracious lord Asil, yes?"

Vasili tries not to flinch at the use of his given name. "Vasili, yes," he corrects gently. "Who are you?"

The man bows thrice, putting up his hands. When his back bends, Vasili finally notices the shock collar attached to his neck. "Lord Vasili, of course, of course—my humblest, sincerest apologies. I am but a slave who owes his every waking and resting breath to Darth Baras. He has instructed me to lead you to his chambers. If you would follow me, my lord...?" The man bows again, this time gesturing further into the tower.

"Uh." Vasili nods, unsure of what else he can possibly do. "By all means, lead the way."

Vasili and his new companion cross the Sith Sanctum antechamber, Vasili's heart hammering behind still-aching ribs. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he recognizes that he should get that looked at, but for the most part, his entire being is focused on his approaching conversation with Baras. A thousand thoughts roil in his head, and he struggles to keep focused. What tasks, what fate awaits him, here in the cradle of the Empire?

"You cut an imposing figure indeed, my lord," the man says as they walk. "Most fearsome. Darth Baras was quite right to choose you as an apprentice. As he is in all things, of course."

Vasili can't say he hears that particular compliment often. And he can't exactly mention that to this man—or anyone. "I'm glad you think so," he says instead. 

"Surely you must strike terror into all who stand against you, fearsome juggernaut," the man continues. "I know I would be most terrified if I made to oppose you. Any being who goes into battle without armor is one who is very confident indeed."

Vasili isn't entirely sure if that's meant to be a backhanded compliment or not. Is he calling him cocky, or does he really think that it's so impressive that Vasili could fight under-armored? Or is he just reading too far into the words of a man who's been beaten down by Sith his whole life, conditioned to think of everything they do as the epitome of power?

"I couldn't say if that's the case," he says. "My battles don't tend to last long enough to ask."

The man offers a soft chuckle, though the sound comes out slightly strained, as if he's not really laughed for a long time. "I do not doubt it, my lord. Ah, here we are." He steps to the side, one hand held out to beckon Vasili to the door just ahead. "You will find Darth Baras down the corridor, my lord." He casts Vasili a glance, eyes slightly wide. "You will... tell him I was good, yes? That I served well?"

"Of course," Vasili says. "You did your duty well." The least he can do is put in a good word for this poor creature—and the most, to his dismay. He can't exactly make a bid for his freedom, like he freed Vette. "Thank you," he adds.

"Thank _you,_ kind, gentle lord," the man says, bowing again. "May all your enemies crumble before you."

Vasili opens his mouth for some sort of reply—though he has no idea what; what is he meant to say to any of this?—but the man slinks off without another word, leaving Vasili alone at the end of the corridor, surrounded by Imperial soldiers who won't so much as look at him. 

The walk into Baras's chamber is far, far too short. Vasili finds himself glancing over his shoulder, looking for a companion he knows isn't there. Why did he think it was a good idea to leave her outside? Even ignoring any potential danger Vette might end up in, he already feels less sure on his feet without her at his back. 

Not that there's much she could do to help him here.

The corridor ends with a wide, open chamber, occupied only by a durasteel rack propped up against one wall, faintly stained with blood. He finds Baras, as he often seems to, standing behind a wide metal desk, his back to the door. Either hearing Vasili's footsteps or simply sensing his presence, Baras turns, and Vasili drops to one knee.

"Ah, you've arrived—and not a moment too soon," Baras intones, and Vasili feels a faint chill dart down his spine just from the sound of his voice rattling behind that mask. "I do not see the Twi'lek slave. Have you discarded my gift to you so soon, apprentice?"

"No, master," Vasili says, quickly shaking his head. "She's merely waiting outside."

Baras pauses for but a moment, and then chuckles. "You have already trained her to the point that you can simply leave her outside? I underestimated you."

Vasili's stomach twists, but he doesn't disagree. Let Baras believe what he wants. 

Ignoring his apprentice's silence, Baras continues. "A properly beaten-down slave is the only trustworthy creature in the galaxy—as I'm sure you noticed from my minion outside. It pleases me to know that you have learned this so quickly."

"I'm glad to please you, master," Vasili says.

Another low chuckle. Vasili glances up, as if that will somehow give even the vaguest indication of what amuses Baras so. Baras does, however, gesture for Vasili to rise; all Vasili can do is obey.

Baras turns once more, putting his back to Vasili. He seems to be looking at something that only he himself can see—or else proving some sort of point. After all, it's been drilled into Vasili since he first learned combat that one should never turn one's back on anyone else, enemy or ally; to do so is to practically invite a stab in the back. Baras knows that Vasili is in no position to take advantage of this shift, no matter how strong he claims Vasili may be, and thus, he can afford to lord that fact over him.

Now that Vasili thinks on it, it sends a very clear message indeed. Even with his back turned, Baras can crush him before he even takes a step.

"Your responsibilities as my apprentice will mandate contact with my various minions," Baras continues. "Meet my directives, and you may do as you will to any you encounter—adversary or ally."

Vasili swallows. "You can trust I'll use good judgment, master," he promises with a deep bow.

Baras seems to ignore him. "Over the years," he says, his voice low, "I have woven a vast network of spies and operatives into the fabric of the galaxy—within the Sith, Republic, and Jedi alike. I have fingers, eyes, and ears everywhere."

Vasili gapes a moment before remembering himself and snapping his mouth closed. "You've infiltrated the Jedi Order, master?" He does not know much of the Jedi—only that which the overseers had taught, and what the holocrons in the library said—but even with that limited knowledge he knows that such a task would have been no easy feat. The stories whispered amongst acolytes spoke of terrible, unstoppable beings with the ability to read the minds of anyone who crossed their path, to see the deepest secrets of their hearts, and subsequently weigh their sins against their Code.

That Baras could successfully plant his agents among their number is utterly terrifying.

"Yes," Baras replies, voice as impassive as ever. "My operatives are completely undetected, and I intend to keep it that way. I can watch our enemy, influencing and weakening them from within, waiting for the perfect moment to strike." 

Vasili is quiet for a moment, absorbing his master's words. "What am I, master?" he asks. "A finger, an eye, or an ear?"

Baras turns, one hand on his desk. "You are to be my enforcer—not so much a single finger as an entire clenched fist," he says. "You will protect my interests, intimidate my rivals, and destroy my enemies. And it is time for your tenure to begin.

"A military shuttle is to land in the Kaas City cargo port, bearing a vitally important prisoner to be delivered to me. You are to meet one Commander Lanklyn there, and ensure that he and his men successfully off-load this prisoner."

Vasili bows. "I would be honored to help, master," he replies. (Perhaps it _is_  for the best that Vette isn't here. She'd hate listening to this.) 

"Remember, apprentice, we must always assume that we are being plotted against, especially in such high-stakes games as I play. Never let your guard down." Baras gestures to the door. "The importance of this prisoner cannot be overstated. Go to cargo port B7 immediately—and stay sharp. Dismissed."

"Yes, master." Vasili bows low again, and takes his leave. 

* * *

Vette squints, trying to search those smiling red eyes for any indication of what the kriff he's getting at. "What kind of a deal?" she says. 

Alkaev'ari'nuruodo leans back, one leg folded over the other, and props his mask on one knee. "As I mentioned, miss Vette, you have quite a good eye," he says. "I'm sure you've already noticed the resemblance between myself and your Sith comrade."

"Yeah..." Vette frowns. "Wait, how long have you been there watching if you saw him too?"

"Long enough," Alkaev'ari'nuruodo says, one eyebrow slightly raised. "If I might be so bold, how did you two come to meet?"

Vette grimaces, folding her arms over her chest. "You _might_ , but that doesn't mean I'm gonna tell you."

Alkaev'ari'nuruodo just nods at that, as if he hadn't expected her to reply at all. He cracks a small, crooked smile, showing straight, white teeth. "Fair enough. You can't begrudge me my curiosity." Peeling his hands from his gloves, he scoots a hand's breadth away from Vette and sits with one foot propped up on the seat, the picture of casual jerkassery. And she's sure he must think he's _so_  charming. "As for my deal," he continues, "perhaps what I should have asked was this: Does your relationship with him cause you any particular misgivings with regard to, say, providing a periodic report on his status? You would, of course, be compensated for your trouble."

The kriff is he going on about? "Why the hell would I spy on Vasili for you?"

Alkaev'ari'nuruodo cocks his head to one side. "I would hardly call it spying," he says. "Simply think of it as providing updates on his wellbeing for the sake of his concerned older brother." 

"And besides," says a voice, accompanied by a slender blue hand on Alkaev'ari'nuruodo's shoulder. Vette looks up to see _another_  Chiss—a woman, wearing an outfit that perfectly matches Alkaev'ari'nuruodo's, longcoat and all, and her hair done up in a bun so tight it looks honestly painful. "As far as these things go, this is hardly the most distasteful thing you could do. It's practically charitable."

Expression hardening for a brief moment, Alkaev'ari'nuruodo sits up, mask on the bench now, beckoning the woman towards him and whispering something in her ear. Vette tries to hear, but what little she can make out is in a language she doesn't know. The woman nods, stroking Alkaev'ari'nuruodo's hair before walking away. He turns his focus back to Vette, moving back to a lounging position.

"My apologies, miss Vette. As my dear colleague said, this is hardly the worst thing you could be doing—particularly for the fee I'm willing to provide."

"You're really not gonna let this go, huh?" Vette asks. 

Alkaev'ari'nuruodo flashes another crooked grin. "You've yet to really answer my question is, in my defense," he replies. "A simple yes or no is all I need—or, if you need more time to consider, I can provide a temporary holofrequency to call when you know your choice for certain." He produces a small piece of white cloth from his back pocket, and a fancy-looking ink pen from his coat. "As I said," he continues, scribbling on the fabric—a handkerchief, Vette realizes—"this is simply an effort to keep an eye on my little brother." A frankly unnecessary flourish, and Alkaev'ari'nuruodo clicks the pen closed and hands the handkerchief to Vette. "Please, at least understand that I've not seen him in over a decade. I just want to be sure he's safe."

Vette looks down at the frequency he's scribbled down, and then back up at him. "He's hanging out with a bunch of Sith these days," she points out, pocketing the handkerchief. "Not exactly the safest place to be."

Alkaev'ari'nuruodo's smile fades, just for a moment, and he sighs. "Exactly my point," he says. He smooths out a crease on his pants leg that only he can see. "He told you to use his core name, yes? Among our people, that's considered a sign of friendship. So, miss Vette, if any modicum of that sentiment is returned, can you at the very least promise to keep my brother safe?"

Vette snorts at that one. "That's what I've been doing this whole time," she says. "Believe me, if it weren't for me, he'd be zombie food."

That actually seems to give Alkaev'ari'nuruodo pause, his eyebrows briefly darting to his hairline before he schools his expression back into cool nonchalance. "Then he's in good hands. Thank you." He extends a dark blue hand towards her. Vette stares at it for a few seconds before reaching out to shake it. And he does shake her hand, for a moment, before bending down and kissing her knuckles. "I'm afraid I must go. It was a privilege to meet you, miss Vette."

Vette can feel her face flushing. Okay, so he might be a _little_  charming. Not like Vette cares. "It's nice to meet you too, uh..." 

Alkaev'ari'nuruodo stands, tugging his gloves back on, and flashes another easy grin. "You can call me Varin. Any friend of Vasili's is a friend of mine," he says. He bows, scooping up his mask in the same movement. "Farewell, Vette. I hope you'll consider my offer."

Vette watches him go, his longcoat flowing a bit in the wind. Vaguely, she thinks maybe he wasn't a total assbag. Mostly, she just really wants a coat like that. 

"Vette." She turns to see Vasili walking towards her, expression closed-off. "I hope you were all right out here," he says, holding out a hand to help her up.

"Yeah, yeah, all good," Vette assures him, wondering if it's a good idea to tell him what just happened. "Where's Darth Bag-of-Dicks sending us next?"

"Vette!" Vasili hisses, a flash of panic crossing his face. "Please, not now—not _here._ "

Vette crosses her arms. "C'mon, it's not like he can hear us out here." 

Vasili grimaces, glancing over his shoulder. For a moment, he's silent. "Whether he is or not," he says eventually, his voice low, "I can't give an impression that I don't respect my master. So please. For my sake, if nothing else."

_Promise to keep my brother safe._  Vette huffs. "Okay, okay, fine. But I'm not gonna stop calling him that in my head."

Vasili heaves a sigh of relief. "Thank you, Vette."

"You got it, boss." Vette gives him a mock salute. "Really, though, where next?"

* * *

The taxi ride from the Citadel to the edge of the city is, thankfully, uneventful. Vette's gone strangely quiet—but then, Vasili's only known her for a day. For all he knows, she's just prone to bouts of silence.

Trying to hold back the rush of vertigo, Vasili watches the city rush past below them, its people barely specks of color against the stark grey roads. Is this how all the Sith Lords feel, up in the confines of their sanctum? Far above, far above, until living, thinking beings are barely more than insects in their sight? Solder, Moff, slave—all just motes of dust when seen from on high, insignificant no matter what. 

Vasili shivers. Now he's returning to the ground, another speck, another bug to be crushed underfoot. 

They step out of the taxi and back onto solid ground, Vette almost immediately putting her hands on her blasters. 

"You know, I'm a city girl," she says, wrinkling her nose as she glances around, "but something about this place just rubs me wrong. Maybe it's something in the air, or all the slavery..."

Vasili glances at her sidelong. "I'd put my money on the latter, if I was the betting type." He rubs the back of his neck. "And if I had money to bet."

Vette laughs at that. "Hey, maybe once you can stop running errands for Baras, you could pick up some credits moonlighting as a stripper on Nar Shaddaa. It's not like you wear a lot of clothes anyway," she says, "and Chiss strippers are hard to come by. Or so I hear."

Is she joking? Vasili desperately hopes she's joking, and that the heat spreading across his cheeks isn't too visible. "If Baras ever decides I'm both not worth keeping around _and_ not worth killing, I want to go home to Csilla. Become an archaeologist, pretend none of this ever happened. I am _not_  becoming an... an exotic dancer." 

Vette has to stifle her giggling with her hand now, her laughter causing her to double over even as she walks. "Spoilsport," she says when she finally manages to contain herself.

Vasili blinks at her slowly, just once—the Chiss equivalent of rolling one's eyes. Not that she's likely to know that, of course, and judging by the way she ignores him, she doesn't. Thankfully, he's fairly certain they've gotten close to their destination by now, and he thinks—hopes, rather—that even Vette won't talk about him becoming a stripper in front of a bunch of human Imperials.

The cargo port is fairly well-labeled, marked by a durasteel sign that simply says _B7_  in plain Aurebesh. Inside is a plainly decorated antechamber, with long, slender tables flanked by metal chairs on either side, leading to a wide elevator. Vasili and Vette cross the anteroom, the elevator _ping_ ing quietly as the doors slide open. 

The doors open to a wide, open loading bay, at the far end of which Vasili sees a group of Imperials gathered around what looks like a large grey block of stone. Curious, he steps forward, apparently unnoticed by the Imperials.

"—hurry up and get this hunk of carbonite to its owner," says one, standing with his back turned to Vette and Vasili while his soldiers work to start hoisting the block onto a large hoversled.

Vette clears her throat. "Hey, Captain Oblivious. _Boo_."

One of the Imperials—Lanklyn, Vasili assumes, which makes him a Commander and not a Captain, but he's not about to split hairs with Vette—turns, a look of surprise crossing his mustached face as he glances first at Vette, and then to Vasili. He snaps to attention. "My lord," he says. "I—I apologize. I didn't see you enter." He frowns, scratching at the cybernetics grafted to his jaw. "Lord Baras didn't need to send a welcoming party," he says, almost to himself.

"You really shouldn't have had your back to the door, Commander," Vasili points out, trying to keep his voice gentle. "If I were an enemy, you'd likely all be dead."

"All due respect, my lord," Lanklyn says, "but this _is_ the capital world of the Empire. And besides, my men and I have performed much more dangerous duties for Lord Baras. Past that, the prisoner—" here he gestures towards that grey block, which Vasili now sees is a man encased in a slab of rock, face contorted in a permanent scream—"is frozen in carbonite. Hardly a flight risk, and this is friendly territory. This is probably the safest place possible."

"Probably," Vasili echoes with a faint grimace. "But Darth Baras instructed me never to let my guard down, and I imagine the same goes for you and your men as well."

"I'll... take it under advisement, my lord," Lanklyn says, clearing his throat. "For now, let's get this oversized hunk of ice to your master."

No sooner does Lanklyn turn back to the block of carbonite than Vasili hears the faint rhythm of boots on the permacrete floor, followed by that now familiar electric charge of a fight in the air. Stars above, if a single thing in his life could just go without a hitch—

Vasili turns, unclipping Rifith's lightsaber from his belt and igniting it in a spark of red light. Sure enough, walking slowly towards him he can see a pair of human males, both with blasters leveled right at his head. He glances up for a fraction of a second and sees another lying across a pile of crates, staring at him through the scope of a sniper rifle. 

"Not so fast," says one of the men—a slight creature with greasy-looking dark hair and a dusty tan jacket. "My master ordered that block of ice, so you can step away from the carbonite man, very slowly, and no one ends up in a grave."

Everyone and their brother wants this block of carbonite, Vasili thinks. He wets his lips, weighing his odds. Two humans with ordinary hand-held blasters, one with a sniper rifle, versus himself and his lightsabers, not to mention Vette and the Imperial soldiers. Better odds than he's used to, to be sure—and besides that, he'd rather face down a dozen armed Force-nulls than go back to Baras empty-handed. "Your master is going to be disappointed," he says.

The man's face twists into an ugly, animal grimace. "Perhaps I didn't make myself quite clear enough," he says.

* * *

The moment the first shot goes off, Vette is ducking behind a crate and furiously shooting back. Kriffing hell, Vasili's just a trouble magnet, isn't he? She keeps her focus on the human pricks trying to riddle them with blaster bolts, though out of the corner of her eye she can see Vasili's twin lightsabers in a flurry of motion, blocking blaster bolts as fast as they come. Some ricochet off the blades, grazing the attackers, while others simply strike the walls.

Greaser, as Vette's decided his name shall be, makes the mistake of trying to straight-up bull rush Vasili when he realizes that just shooting isn't going to work. Vasili tries to sidestep, but Greaser is stubborn, and keeps charging. Time freezes. Vasili's face is a mask of cold determination as he puts his blades forward—

—Greaser chokes on his own blood, falling to his knees.

Vette grimaces, but tears her eyes away to aim for the others. The sniper has his sights trained on Vasili, lining up the shot. She doesn't know if he'll see in time. Shit. There's no time to properly aim, so she just fires both blasters and prays to whatever forces are keeping her alive that it does something. One bolt goes wide, but the other strikes the sniper in the shoulder, and his grip falters. He fumbles with the rifle for the split second it takes Vasili to notice him and take a running leap up the stack of crates, sabers raised. Poor bastard doesn't even get a chance to scream. 

The third stares up at Vasili. Glances at Vette, and then back to Vasili. And he drops his blasters and runs. Another blaster bolt cracks through the air, and Vette jumps, glancing back over her shoulder to see the Commander, face set and cold, lower his sidearm with a sigh. He looks up at Vasili and bows.

"Point taken, my lord," he says, and it takes Vette a second to realize that he's making a joke.

Imperials can make jokes. In other news, up is down, right is left, and gravity goes up now.

Vasili jumps down from the pile of crates, lightsabers extinguished, and looks down at the body of the third attacker. Grimacing, he nudges the body with his boot. It pointedly doesn't move. "Good shot," he says, sounding more tired than anything. 

"Thank you, my lord," says the Commander, with yet another sharp bow. "Perhaps we should get this to your master before anyone _else_  decides to show up."

"I couldn't agree more."

* * *

Vette and Vasili take another regular old taxi to the Sith Sanctum, while the Imperials cart the carbonite block on a large land speeder.  Vasili doesn't talk through it, instead just leaning his head back and closing his eyes, jaw tense. She thinks about breaking the silence, telling him how his brother came to talk to her, but from the look of him, he's got other things on his plate, and adding more seems almost mean. 

They touch down, and Vette hops out of the taxi. Vasili follows a little more slowly, his movements dragging. Did he get hurt during that shootout? He's not _bleeding,_ not that Vette can see, but there are definitely a lot of ugly, splotchy bruises across his back and sides that she hadn't noticed before. 

"Hey," she says, stepping in front of him to get up in his face. "You in there, buddy?"

Vasili blinks down at her, confused for a moment, and finally nods. "I'll be fine, Vette. I just—I need to get back to Darth Baras."

No rest for the wicked, Vette thinks, and reluctantly steps to the side to let him through. She briefly entertains the idea of staying outside and waiting again, but a quick glance around shows that there's virtually no one on the platform now, let alone any weird Chiss trying to bribe her. Vette reluctantly follows him inside, keeping close to him so as not to get lost in the sudden sea of Sith and their underlings. (Which, it occurs to her, they both kind of are right now. Which makes her an under-underling, and that thought makes her stomach twist.)

""Wow, nice lights—walk in here, you get an instant headache." Vette squints. "They really should redecorate in here," she says, perhaps a little too briskly, as she looks at and quietly judges the stark, austere décor. "Maybe bring in some nice floral arrangements to offset the oppressive gloom and such."

"I don't think there's such a thing as a nice floral arrangement on Dromund Kaas," Vasili replies, one eyebrow raised as he glances over his shoulder at her. "From the look of it, it's mostly poisonous plants."

"Which would be _perfect_  for all the murder-happy assholes around here," Vette points out. "Somebody pisses you off, you can just push them into a potted plant—boom, problem solved."

Vasili shakes his head, a barely audible laugh shaking his shoulders for a moment. "As... enlightened as that idea is, I don't know if many people would be inclined to agree that the Sanctum needs any sort of change in the first place." He looks up at the high ceiling, taking in a deep breath. "If there's one thing we cherish," he says, "it's history and tradition. Even little changes aren't too highly favored."

_We, huh?_  Vette thinks. She still really doesn't see him and the Sith surrounding them to be all that much alike, but she supposes the years he's been around them has tinted his self-perception. Poor bastard. "Well, when you become a big, scary Darth or whatever, you should tell your buddies to add a little color to the place, okay?"

"I'll... see what I can do," Vasili says, though the tone of his voice rather clearly says that he doesn't think he can do much. 

They pass through a long hallway, and at the end she can see Darth Bag-of-Dicks standing between what looks like an angled durasteel operating table and that carbonite block. When Vasili steps into the room, Baras turns, and Vasili immediately falls to one knee. Reluctantly, Vette follows suit—not out of any respect for the bastard, but because she knows that as bad as a shock collar can be, Sith crap has to be ten times worse.

"Commander Lanklyn informed me of the ambush at the cargo port when he made his delivery," Baras says, his voice grave. "Evidently, there are more eyes on us than even I had anticipated." What a prick.

Responding to some command Vette doesn't see, Vasili stands, extending a hand for Vette to follow suit. She takes it readily, relishing how annoyed Baras must be at his apprentice helping out his own so-called slave. To her annoyance, however, he doesn't even seem to react.

"Apprentice, I have felt a deep disturbance in the Force. An impending storm clouds my dreams—a grave and mysterious threat that could bring ruin to my entire power base."

_Maybe it's something you ate last night,_  Vette thinks, wrinkling her nose at Baras once his back is turned.

Baras stands, hands clasped behind his back, staring at the block of carbonite. "This frozen man is a Republic agent, captured by Imperial operatives whilst investigating my most deeply-embedded spy on Nar Shaddaa." His voice turns coldly angry, and he turns, fists clenched, the single metal eye of his mask trained on Vasili. Vette shivers. "Do you see, apprentice? The Force grants me a vision of doom, and immediately, my untraceable spy—one who has left neither foot nor fingerprints, nor a trail of any kind—is nearly _exposed_." 

"It could be a coincidence, master," Vasili suggests, bowing his head even as he tries to challenge his master.

"It is _not_  coincidence," Baras snarls. "There are no coincidences." He turns once more, stepping towards the block of carbonite until he's almost touching it. "I must learn what tipped off this Republic agent. He is the key to uncovering the true nature of this threat." He takes a half-step back, gloved hands ghosting over the edges of the carbonite block before he starts to key in some sort of unlocking code on the side. Steam hisses at the edges as it starts melting. "Stay here, apprentice. You should learn the best methods of extracting information from an unwilling informant."

It really doesn't take a genius to know what that means. Vette shifts uncomfortably, moving behind Vasili so as to block the operating table from view.

Vasili barely misses a beat. "Yes, master," he says, and bows. He glances around them, and Vette follows his gaze, somehow only just now noticing the massive, spider-like contraption hanging from the ceiling that Vette swears is going to come alive and pick them to pieces at any second. Somehow, he keeps his face impassive. 

"Help me carry him, apprentice," Baras says, stepping aside as the carbonite man peels away from the block. 

Vasili obeys without so much as another _yes, master_ , crossing the few steps to the  wall—leaving Vette with a perfectly clear view of the table. Kriff. He holds out his arms, catching the body with a grunt as it falls. Apparently, by "help" Baras had just meant for Vasili to drag the poor bastard to the table on his own; Darth Bag-of-Dicks just stands there, arms folded behind his back, while Vasili hoists an entire person onto the table. 

When the Pub is mostly situated, but before he can come to, Baras finally steps in to secure his limbs to the table. Vasili stands uncomfortably to the side, eyeing the Pub's face (Vette assumes; those eyes make it hard to tell) with what looks suspiciously like thinly disguised anxiety.

"And now, apprentice, we wait," Baras says. "There is some merit to the notion of beginning the torture before the victim has fully regained consciousness—an added layer of disorientation. For myself, however, I prefer a fully alert subject, one who is aware of what is happening to him. Fear is a potent thing, apprentice, and we must use it to our advantage. Remember this."

Vasili stares at the man for a few seconds longer before tearing his eyes away, looking instead at Baras before bowing his head again. "Yes, master," he says.

It's as if that's all he _can_  say when Baras is in the room. Vette shivers, stepping back until her back hits one of the massive metal pillars. She wants nothing in the galaxy less than to have to watch any of this, but with nothing obstructing her view and no leave given by either of the Sith in the room, she has no kriffing choice. She can't help but watch Baras pace across the room, bringing a dozen or so cruel-looking instruments towards the table. She can't help but watch the Pub slowly coming to, dark eyes bleary as he casts his gaze around the room. And she can't help but look at Vasili, whose face is utterly devoid of any kind of emotion, and feel a cold shiver down her spine.

Baras holds his hands behind his back and steps directly in front of the operating table, right in the agent's field of vision—and blessedly blocking Vette's.

"Do you know where you are?" Baras asks, his voice as even as the sea before a storm.

The agent gives a spluttering cough, but otherwise does not answer. Baras's hands move to his front, his demeanor still horribly, horribly calm. 

He continues with innocuous questions like that—what the date was, who Baras himself is, who the current Chancellor is. Questions Vette's heard doctors ask people who've been unconscious, not torture victims. 

Nevertheless, the agent remains silent.

Minutes pass. Minutes become hours. Baras's questions become more demanding as the day continues—the Pub's name, where he comes from, who sent him. Not a word passes the agent's lips. The tone of Baras's voice shifted, though Vette can't say exactly when, from perfect calm to violent frustration. 

When he takes out those evil-looking instruments, Vette looks away. It doesn't help block out the strangled screams of pain. And when streaks of lightning arc across the room, it doesn't keep her from seeing the flashes of light, or smell the human's flesh burning.

Something cold touches her arm, and Vette flinches. When she hazards a glance up, though, there's just the blue frame of her Sith, blocking her view of everything, a hand behind his back to wrap around her fingers. He squeezes, either for reassurance or apology. Vette'll take either. 

With no windows to look out of, and no chrono on the wall or on her wrist, it's impossible to say how long it takes for the screaming to stop. But it does stop, and for a long moment, there is a cruel, frigid silence, broken only by Baras's ragged breathing.

"Apprentice," Baras says, his voice returning to that terrible calm from before. "What have we learned from this?"

Vasili drops Vette's hand and takes a few steps forward—but thank the stars, he's still mercifully blocking her view of the prisoner. "Not much that I can tell, master," he says hesitantly. "This man is clearly very resilient."

"No," Baras snaps. "No Force-null is this resilient, apprentice. They are brittle things, easy to break with the slightest application of pressure. Something, or someone, must be shielding this man," he says, "which only confirms my suspicions." He rounds on Vasili, who flinches back. "This agent is clearly the key that will unlock this hidden threat we face, apprentice. We _must_  break him."

Vasili bows his head. "What would you have me do, master?"

Baras's only reply is to walk towards the office tucked away past the far wall of the torture room, and beckon Vasili to follow with one hand. Vasili turns to look at Vette, a silent question on his face, and she vehemently shakes her head. No, no no no, she wants absolutely nothing to do with whatever might go on in there. She'd rather party with the battered, half-conscious Pub than hear Baras give another lecture on how to torture him more.

Vette watches the door to the office slam shut behind the two Sith, a door so thick she couldn't eavesdrop if she tried. Thank goodness for that. 

She's pretty sure if she pokes around this room too much she'll get in more trouble than she's willing to deal with, but that doesn't stop her from at least taking a quick glance around. Enough of a glance around, anyway, to know that she doesn't actually want to know what's in here. Which leaves her with nothing to focus on but the battered human on the table. 

His eyes are closed, blackened with bruises, skin and hair marred and scorched from the lightning. His breaths come shallow and ragged, but the rise and fall of his bloodied chest is at least mostly steady. Vette's honestly impressed by how tough the guy must be to withstand that kind of pain—either he's been damn well-trained for this crap, or, like Bag-of-Dicks said, something else is helping him hold strong. For his sake, though, she almost hopes that whichever it is will wear out; that pain isn't going to stop anytime soon otherwise.

The door hisses open, and Vette quickly takes a few steps back (not that she was all that close to begin with, but she's not about to be accused of trying to help an enemy operative, not today). Vasili's put on that mask of deadpan resolve again, and neither he nor Baras say a word as Vasili makes his way towards the exit. Vette has no plans to argue with leaving this hellhole, and follows a few short steps behind.

She'd never thought she'd find relief in stepping out into the humid heat of dreary Dromund Kaas, but here they are. Vette clambers into their taxi, tilting her head back and wrinkling her nose at the raindrops pelleting her face.

"So, boss," she says, not entirely sure if she wants her question answered—but it's not like she can avoid that in the first place, so what the hell. "Where to next?"

When Vette glances over at him, however, Vasili is just staring wordlessly into the horizon, mouth tight, his eyes strained as though he's in pain. She's seen that face before, on people who've just watched someone get crushed in a cave-in. Her mind flashes back to the bruised and bloodied face of the human on the table....

Vette lets him have his silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, huge thanks to Dearest Coauthor Kathrynshadow for her beta-ing. <3


	6. With Our One Foot in the Grave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the wheels begin to turn a little faster.

Vasili keeps his eyes focused on the sky ahead for the sake of his head and stomach—watching his master nearly destroy a sentient being had nauseated him enough; if he so much as thinks about looking down he knows he'll lose what little he's eaten in the past day. _Dark Temple. Full of ancient Sith ghosts, enemies of the Emperor. You'll more than likely die, but that's a risk I'm willing to take._

He shivers.

"We're going to the Dark Temple," he says eventually, "to find an ancient torture device called the Ravager. Lord Baras says the Emperor himself made it himself, to..." He grimaces. "To 'consume' people's minds."

There's a pause, and for a moment all Vasili hears is the wind rushing past. "No offense," Vette says, "but is it just me, or are all Sith relics just really, really terrible?"

Vasili manages a small sound that could possibly be called a laugh, if one were feeling quite generous. "None taken," he says. Frankly, he's entirely in agreement; in his experience, most of the artifacts he's come into contact with have been horrid in one way or another. "But it's still not my place to question my master."

Vette groans. "So we're going to another spooky Sith ruin," she says. "Do you think one of these days he might send us to a beach resort to look for ancient Sith seashells and cocktails instead?"

Vasili snorts at that, and shakes his head only to realize very quickly that that's a terrible idea. Stars above, he wishes it were easier to just walk. "Not likely," he says. He's only been an apprentice for a little while, to be sure, but given what he knows of Baras, and the last ten years of being just an acolyte, just having enough time to get a full night's sleep feels like a blessing. Getting the sort of time off to spend at some sort of resort would be nothing short of a miracle.

He worries his lower lip, uncertain of how much he should tell Vette about the Temple and what he knows about it. Emperor knows he's already on edge enough—particularly given how flippant Baras was about the notion that this excursion might kill him, and how little that really meant in the grand scheme of things. Spreading that to Vette seems almost cruel, but she deserves to know at least _something_  of what they're going into.

"This is going to be dangerous," he says. "Just as much, if not more so than the tombs back on Korriban. More Sith spirits, and who knows what else. If you don't want to come—"

"I'm already in the taxi with you, aren't I?" Vette points out. "'sides, I'm not about to let you go into a spooky-ass ancient temple to get eaten by whatever-the-hell on your own. You're stuck with me now, buddy."

_Buddy_. Vasili thinks he could get used to that. "Suit yourself," he says. 

It's well past dark when the taxi touches down, landing a fair distance away from the Temple grounds and safe from whatever Dark Side influences might creep through the jungle even outside of its crumbling stone walls. Vasili can feel... _something_ , even from here, even when the Temple itself is barely more than a blot on the horizon. Something cruel and bleak and bitter and strangely familiar. He shakes it off—more than likely it's just the influence of whatever ghosts still linger in the jungles and tombs, and he can't let that get to him so soon after landing or else he'll go insane. 

At least down here they're mostly shielded from the rain by all the trees. Vasili draws his lightsabers without igniting them, tension already thrumming through his body. Vette doesn't even question it—not aloud, anyway—so either she feels the same sense of dread, or else she's determined that this is just another eccentricity of his.

The jungle is full of life—the chatter of nocturnal birds, insects buzzing past, the roaring and rumbling of predators creeping in the shadows, the sickly sweet odor of its carnivorous plants. Vasili finds himself almost overwhelmed by it all, the primitive sense of all Dromund Kaas's non-sentient creatures coupled with the fear and anger of its sentients swirling through his mind in a maelstrom of _feeling_. Far above in the skies over Kaas City, the people below had been too distant, too small to properly sense, but here, surrounded by more life than he's ever felt at once, Vasili can't help but feel like he's being smothered by it all.

It only gets worse the closer they get to the Temple. And to think he'd once assumed archeology to be a safe career path.

The walk takes the better part of an hour, and the darkness of Dromund Kaas's night only seems to grow deeper the closer they get. When the treeline breaks, Vasili chances a glance up at the sky, only to see black clouds heavy with the promise of a terrible storm. He swallows, bringing his gaze back to the ground, to the titanic stone structure directly ahead. A line of pillars flank the stone path and steps leading up to it, all cracked and crumbling. Through the darkness, he can see the faintly glowing heat silhouettes of about a dozen bipedal figures, shuffling and stumbling around, seemingly aimless. He glances at Vette, putting a finger to his lips, and waits for her to nod her understanding before turning back to the Temple and walking towards the steps. 

They stay behind the columns, quiet as the shadows they hide in, sidling along before darting across the path to the next column. The very air itself seems to whisper—harsh, hissing words in a language Vasili doesn't know. Watching the beings moving by, he realizes that they're the source of the sound, mumbling and muttering to themselves as they amble around. Their clothes, tattered as they are, are still recognizable to him. Black in the moonlight, austere in decoration, with thick belts and studded gloves.

Sith.

Kriffing hells, these are—they _used_  to be Sith, and yet here they are, haggard and half-mad, roaming aimlessly and muttering to empty air. Is this what awaits him if he fails here? A lifetime of madness, of shambling like the dead?

A sharp crack of lightning jolts Vasili out of his thoughts. He jerks towards the light on instinct, only to see that it's not a bolt from the sky, but from another hooded figure up the path. In one hand, the figure holds a crimson lightsaber, the other hand stretched forward, lightning arcing from their fingertips towards one of the fallen Sith. In the pale light, Vasili sees a familiar grinning face, with a single mechanical eye.

Well, so much for stealth. If that... fellow is going to pick off the madmen roaming the path, then there's little point sneaking around. Vasili takes Vette's hand, nodding towards the Dark Temple, and breaks into a run. Distracted as they are by the aggressions of the grinning cyborg, the half-mad Sith pay Vasili and Vette no heed as they sprint across the cracked stone. There's a small cluster of four or so beings near the entrance, who look up with wild, angry eyes as Vasili approaches.

Skidding to a halt, Vasili ignites his sabers, the madmen following suit. He raises them, prepared to block whatever strikes they'll try to land on him—

Another arc of lightning strikes one in the chest, and then the next, and the next, and the next. As the madmen shake and scream, the sky cracks open and a storm erupts, the shock of it sending Vasili reeling.

"Holy—!" Vette yelps, falling flat on her back.

Vasili looks up again, expecting the whole sky to have erupted in a thunderstorm, but the bolts have only gathered in a small radius, about two meters across, to utterly ruin the four beings standing below. Seconds later, they collapse in a heap, clothes and skin scorched, faces frozen in agony. 

Vasili helps Vette to her feet, watching warily at the hooded shadow approaching them. Vitya extinguishes his saber—which, Vasili can't help but realize, he hadn't even _used_ —and, after a moment's hesitation, Vasili follows suit.

"You survived Korriban, then," Vitya says, somehow managing to sound both congratulatory and so snide as to make Vasili want to hit him. "I suppose congratulations are in order."

Talking to this man is one of the last things Vasili wants to be doing right now. "I suppose so," he says, edging closer to the entrance. 

That cold mechanical eye turns to Vette. Vitya arches an eyebrow. "And you've made a friend. Well done."

Vasili bristles, though he isn't even entirely sure why. It isn't as though Vitya's actually said anything to intentionally needle him, for the most part. The man himself just gets under Vasili's skin by being near. "It looks like you managed to lose one," he says, straightening. "Where's your lover?"

That, at least, seems to make Vitya stiffen. "We aren't lovers," he says, rolling his eyes—or, rather, rolling his flesh eye while the red light of the other simply glances sharply to the side. "And you know that's a perfectly stupid question. If you paid a little more attention, I'm sure you could sense her."

Vasili blinks at him and sighs. "As much as I'd love to swap stories," he lies, "my _friend_  and I have things to do. You and your lover have fun." He takes Vette by the wrist and, before Vitya has the chance to utter another word, pulls her towards the door. Distantly, he thinks he hears a the words _actually growing a spine_ , and he burns with an anger that surprises and frightens him.

"Buddy of yours?" Vette asks when they get inside.

Vasili lets go of her wrist with an apologetic wince. And then the meaning of her question actually clicks in his brain. " _Kriff_  no," he replies, wrinkling his nose. "We had to work together on an assignment once, before Baras officially made me his apprentice. I didn't think I'd ever bump into him again."

Vette glances out the door and coughs. "Well, your not-buddy looks like he's coming in too," she says, "so how's about we leg it and get out of here as quick as possible? This place is already giving me the heebie-jeebies."

"You took the words right out of my mouth," Vasili says.

The inside of the Dark Temple gives Vasili the same terrible feeling as he'd had the whole walk here, amplified until it's a scream in his mind. That brief interruption had distracted him for a moment, given him something to focus on but the fear roiling in the air—and for that, Vasili supposes he should be grateful—but now that it's all he can focus on, it threatens to crush him, to break him into thousands of brittle shards and leave him just the same as the mumbling, broken creatures outside.

As ever, the fear pushes him forward.

A pale green light illuminates the massive chambers of the Temple, nauseous and ethereal. Massive statues of long-dead Sith adorn its walls, stone eyes watching Vasili and Vette as they creep through the corridors. More half-mad men and women roam the halls, Sith and Force-null alike. The darkness here doesn't discriminate. 

Vasili won't admit it, but he hasn't the faintest idea of where they're going; Baras's instructions were simply to find the Ravager hidden deep in the Temple, but not where in the Temple it actually was. He grits his teeth against the feelings assaulting him on all sides and pushes forward, trusting in the Force to lead him where he needs to be—either by guiding his steps to glory, or by chasing him towards his goal. 

A maze of thin corridors, held up only by failing scaffolding, dead-ends at a small, round chamber, dimly lit by an uneasy orange glow. Vasili stops, and Vette bumps into his back with a soft yelp of protest.

"I think this might be it," Vasili says, glancing around.

In the center of the chamber is a stone chest, roughly hewn and carved from top to bottom with jagged inscriptions, about as broad as Vasili's shoulders and as high as his waist. He takes a hesitant step towards it, reaching out with his hands and the Force, arms straining as he lifts the heavy lid. Gently, he pushes it back and lets it touch the ground. As he approaches it, the faint orange glow seems to pulse. Vasili looks inside...

...to find it empty.

Vette steps up to his right, squinting as she looks into the chest. "Huh. You sure?"

Vasili sighs, running a hand through his hair. "I thought so, but..." He shakes his head. "Hang on a moment."

He kneels beside the chest, peering at the carvings that adorn its sides. The words are certainly archaic, but he can still recognize the script. Vasili starts to crawl circles around it, trying to read as much of the inscription as he can. There's talk of pain, of unspeakable suffering, more pain, a darkness that devours, a brutal death to all who speak against the Emperor and his glory...

"Yeah," he murmurs. "This is it. Someone must have stolen it."

"And that's... bad, right?" Vette says. "Baras can't have it if someone else does."

"Who knows what that 'someone else' might do with it," Vasili says with a small shiver. "Come on. We've got to get the Ravager back."

Vasili stands and turns. He takes one step towards the opening to the chamber before finding the way blocked by a large human man, dressed in a simple cloth tunic, the skin around his eyes cracked and dry with Dark Side influence. 

"You'll do no such thing," says the man, raising a gloved fist—and in it, Vasili sees a sharp, cruel piece of metal, battered and worn by time. That, then, must be the Ravager.

Behind him, Vasili hears Vette groan to herself. "Great," she mutters. "Another fight."

"I am Lord Vacuus—the conquerer of Begeren, the killer of Garatak the Singed. The Ravager belongs to me," continues the man. "It alone will enable me to exact appropriate retribution on all those who have ever dared oppose me." He glowers at Vasili. "Starting with _you._ "

Vasili reaches for his lightsabers, jaw clenched. "You don't look much like a Sith to me," he says slowly. (What he won't mention is that _Vacuus_  is a terrible, terrible name.)

"Insolent brat," snaps Vacuus, drawing his own saber and igniting it. "Perhaps your vision will improve in death!"

"Not very bright, is he?" asks Vette.

Vasili doesn't reply— _can't_  reply, because he's igniting his lightsabers and backpedaling to avoid Vacuus's massive, sweeping strike. His opponent's blade slices through the air where Vasili's left arm had been only half a second before. Vasili grunts, pushing back before Vacuus can have him tripping over the artifacts littering the floor of the chamber. He batters the man, shoving him back, and back, the flurry of their blades and the sparks cast off from their impact lighting the room. Vette fires off a few shots, but Vasili knows she can't risk too many in such a small space without accidentally getting him caught in the crossfire.

The stink of sweat and blood and scorched skin fills the air. Vasili's own heart thunders behind his ribs, his breath quick and ragged in his ears. Desperate, the fear of this place swimming through his head, Vasili leaps up and kicks the man, the sole of his boot crushing against the human's sternum. Vacuus falls back, spluttering, his back against the wall.

Vasili shuts his eyes, holding his lightsabers like scissors against Vacuus's neck, and cleaves his head clean from his shoulders. The body falls, and the Ravager clatters to the ground.

"Vette," he says, kneeling down to take the Ravager off the floor, "I hate this place. Let's go."

"Took the words right out of my mouth, boss," Vette says.

* * *

Dawn has risen by the time they reach the Citadel. Vasili has never had a normal sleep rhythm by any stretch of the imagination, but he can feel his body crying out for rest now all the same. But there's no rest for the weary; all that awaits him here is the gruesome spectacle of Baras continuing to torture the Republic agent.

Ravager in hand, Vasili makes his way back to his master, Vette following close behind. Even before they reach the torture chamber, he can hear Baras's rage, the strangled screams of the agent as he maintains his silence.

Baras's breathing is heavy as he turns to face Vasili. He chuckles low in his throat. "When I sent you into the Dark Temple, I had thought for a moment that it would be the last time I saw you, apprentice. I am glad that you have proven me wrong." He glances over his shoulder, extending his hand. Wordlessly, Vasili presses the cruel instrument into his palm. "The prisoner grows weaker by the minute. We have little time to spare. Stand back, and bear witness."

Vasili is all too happy to step away, hands folded behind his back. He watches with growing nausea as Baras pushes the Ravager into the agent's skull, blood trickling down his forehead as its cruel edges pierce the skin. 

For the first time, the agent speaks, his blue eyes hard as he stares defiantly up at his torturer. "You're wasting your time," he rasps between ragged breaths. "I will... not..." 

His scream tears through the air. Blue fades into a bright, glowing red before his eyes roll back into his skull, body twisting against his bonds.

"Yes, _yes_ ," Baras hisses. "The Ravager has seized his mind, apprentice. In his condition, however, we don't have much longer before the ordeal destroys his brain beyond repair."

The knot that has become Vasili's stomach impossibly tightens. He glances away. "Perhaps he'd last longer if you lessen the pain, master."

"The pain is crucial to the device's effectiveness," Baras says, not even so much as glancing over his shoulder. When he speaks again, his voice is a terrible snarl. "Republic worm, I know that you have the information I desire. You will tell me _everything._ "

The agent shudders and groans. "I am..." he begins, the words drawn painfully from his mouth, "Republic... Information Service." He gives a strangled noise, and when Vasili dares to look, there are tears tracking down his  bloodied face. "On special... assignment, to verify a... a potential Imperial spy embedded... on Nar Shaddaa. C-commissioned by th... Jedi Council," he grates out, "acting on suspicions of—of Master Nomen Karr."

"Nomen Karr," growls Baras. "That is a name I grow weary of hearing."

Vasili hesitates, unsure if he's allowed to speak. "Who is Nomen Karr, master?" he asks, voice quiet.

"An old enemy of mine," Baras says, turning to glance at Vasili. "A Jedi Master who managed to infiltrate the Sith, many years ago. I had rooted him out, but then he nearly destroyed me—and fled. He has dedicated himself to proving that the Sith have spies embedded within the ranks of the Republic and the Jedi Order. I have thwarted him at every turn," he continues, "but he is nothing if not tenacious." That cold mask turns back, its single eye boring into the agent on the table. "How did Nomen Karr come to suspect my spy on Nar Shaddaa, Republic filth? What alerted him?"

The agent shakes, trying and failing to resist whatever horrible influence the Ravager has over him. "New... Padawan," he answers, squeezing his eyes shut. "They say she... she knows any being's true nature. Senses... hidden darkness and—and unseen purity."

Baras is still for a moment. When he speaks again, his tone is startlingly calm. Contemplative, even. "I have never heard of the Force granting such a gift. Tell me," he says, voice going cold again as he stares down at the Republic agent, "how does it _work_?"

"All—all I know is that... when Master Karr brought her to... to Nar Shaddaa, she s-sensed the... the darkness in your spy... just by seeing him."

Vasili's blood is ice. "That's..." He casts about for an appropriate word, but finds none. "Troubling."

"It is the doom I spoke of before," Baras replies, turning away from the agent. "The disruption in the Force that has tainted my dreams. If this Padawan can truly see through deception and disguise without effort, then she stands to jeopardize everything that I have worked for, everything I have built." He takes in a long, slow breath. "Continue, Republic dog."

"Karr... believes his Padawan's ability is... is infallible. B-but the Jedi Council... skeptical. I was meant t-to provide... proof, but I—I couldn't report my... my findings."

That's good news, right? It means that Baras's network hasn't been exposed. Somehow, Vasili can't find it in himself to be particularly happy. "Perhaps we should try to learn more about her, master," he says.

"Yes, apprentice," Baras says, inclining his head. "Such a threat must not wander the galaxy unchecked." Fists clenched, he stares down at the agent once more. "Who is this Padawan?" he demands. "Tell me _everything_  you know of her."

"She was... found on Alderaan," the agent answers through gritted teeth, his voice growing weak. "Power... first emerged in training on—on Tatooine. Jedi sent... another agent... investigating someone she suspected... on... Balmorra."

"He's fading," Baras mutters. When he speaks to the agent again, his voice is tinted with an almost panicked desperation. "Is she human, or one of the Jedi's cursed aliens?" Vasili flinches at that, but otherwise keeps his emotions in check. "Where is she? What is her name?"

The agent's eyes squeeze shut. "I have... nothing... m... more..." He gives a strangled gasp, his body convulsing. The light fades. 

Baras is silent for a long moment, his shoulders tense, his breaths heavy. "The Ravager has emptied his mind," he says bitterly. "This is all that we have to go on—a few random places, scattered through the galaxy, where Nomen Karr and his damned Padawan have been."

"We're that much less in the dark than we were before, master," Vasili says, hesitant lest his words somehow spark yet more rage in his master.

"It is a pittance at best," Baras retorts, pacing furiously towards his office—mercifully far away from the corpse on the table. Vasili follows without objection. "Nomen Karr is relentless, apprentice, and this Padawan and her power threaten _everything_ I have achieved." Baras leans over his desk, staring down at the datapads embedded in its durasteel surface. "Apprentice, your duties will take you to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. I will need to deploy you at will." His hand taps at the datapads in seemingly random order, and he straightens, facing Vasili. "Rather than continuing to be shuttled like a common soldier, you shall have a starship of your own. You have earned it. Go to my hangar in the spaceport and claim it for yourself."

Vasili's breath catches in his throat. "You are most generous, master," he says, bowing deeply at the waist. He can practically feel Vette's disdain for the gesture.

Baras waves a hand dismissively, as if this means absolutely nothing. "I must consider our next move. Go, apprentice. Take your starship, and await my instructions."

"Yeah," Vette agrees, already halfway out of the room. "Let's go before he tells me to clean up the mess back there, all right?"

Vasili bows low again, turning to catch up. 

* * *

It's a struggle not falling asleep during the ride from the Citadel to the spaceport, but the sheer nausea and discomfort of flying is just enough to keep Vasili awake. He's wobbly on his feet when they touch down, and Vette seems to notice, taking hold of his arm and helping him walk in a straight line. 

"You look like hell," she says with a grin.

Vasili doesn't doubt that. "Hopefully we can rest when we get to the ship," he says, weakly trying to mirror her expression.

They pass through the spaceport with little issue, other than Vasili's own exhaustion. Thank the stars, Baras's personal hangar isn't far from the entrance—a perk, Vasili supposes, of having such a vast power base. And inside...

Inside is one of the most incredible ships he's seen since he left the Ascendancy. His weariness seeming to fade in an instant, Vasili breaks into a jog to get a better look at the ship— _his_ ship. It's sleek, polished obsidian, with sharp lines made for aerodynamics and maneuverability.  And it's _his_.

Vette whistles. "That is one sexy ship," she says, stepping up beside him and leaning against the massive metal doorframe leading into the hangar. She glances at him, eyes bright in a broad smile. "You gonna name it?"

Vasili keeps staring for a long moment, heart in his throat. "I don't know," he says. "I've never—I've never had anything like this before." Stars above, he's never really owned anything in his life, other than the clothes on his body and the lightsabers at his belt. To have something like this is enough to knock him off his feet with wonder. "How do you name a ship, Vette?" he asks.

Vette pauses, a hand to her chin. "You pick something you care about," she says. "Something that means a lot to you."

Silence hangs between the two of them as Vasili draws his attention back to the ship. His ship. His newfound piece of freedom, his new home, his—

" _Cart'ar,_ " Vasili says eventually. "I want to name it _Cart'ar_."

Vette stares at him for a few seconds, waiting for him to elaborate. When he neglects to, she rolls her eyes. "And that means...?"

Vasili looks back at her, a slow smile spreading across his face. "It's Cheunh for _hope_."

Grinning back, Vette lightly punches him in the arm. "That's cheesy as hell," she says. "I like it."

 

Vasili pushes past the service droid waiting for them on the _Cart'ar_ , breathlessly taking in the interior with the same sense of wonder as he had stared at the exterior. The droid's words wash over him as if from a distance as he roams through each of the rooms, overcome with the knowledge that this is _his._ He falls onto the small couch in front of the holoterminal, kicking off his boots and reveling in it all. 

The droid hesitates over him. "Master, do you require anything?"

"Nothing at all," Vasili responds, eyes already shut, "except a good night's sleep."

"Er." The droid hovers a moment longer. "Yes, master."

Vasili falls into a deep sleep within minutes, blessedly dreamless.

It lasts barely twenty minutes before the holoterminal goes off. Groaning, Vasili sits up, trying his best to look at least moderately presentable before standing and answering the call. The holo flickers to life, and a spectral facsimile of Darth Baras stands above him. Vasili kneels.

"I trust you find your new starship satisfactory, apprentice," Baras intones.

"It's excellent, master," Vasili replies, daring to look up. "You are most gracious."

"I hope that it serves you well. There is much to be done," Baras continues without so much as a pause. "My interests must be protected—and my enemies destroyed. Nomen Karr's efforts to expose my spies and prove this Padawan's power to his Jedi Council must be met with absolute, crushing failure. You," he says, "will exhaust yourself in this endeavor."

Vasili swallows, dropping his head back down. "Yes, master."

"The information we siphoned from the Republic agent shall be our only map," Baras says. "My spy on Nar Shaddaa was being watched, we know where this Padawan was discovered, where she was trained, and that _someone_  has been sent to investigate my spy on Balmorra." The flickering specter of Baras folds his hands behind his back. "This Padawan must be hunted down and brought to ruin, apprentice—but first, you will secure my network and silence my spies on Balmorra and Nar Shaddaa."

There's an acrid taste in Vasili's mouth at the promise in Baras's words. "Why not recall them, master? Surely you can ensure their integrity just as well by bringing them home."

"Their disappearances would look suspicious to the Jedi," Baras says, "and only serve to confirm the Padawan's accusations. Besides," he adds, his voice low and cruel, "one lesson you must learn, apprentice, is that the only spy with true integrity is a dead one. My spies must die." He straightens, inclining his head. "You will meet with my contact on Balmorra, and there you will be briefed in how to fulfill your mission. Go, apprentice. Bring cruelty. Bring rage—bring _death._ "

The holo flickers out, leaving Vasili still kneeling on the floor, heart thundering in his ears. Vette walks onto the bridge, barefoot, and stares at him. 

"How much did you hear?" Vasili asks, standing with some effort.

Vette shrugs. "Enough," she says, glancing at the terminal. She grimaces. "Balmorra, huh? Definitely not what I'd call a resort planet."

Vasili can't say he knows enough about the matter to agree or disagree. And that's something of a problem. "Once I have the ship pointed in the right direction," he says, "I'm going to do some reading—figure out exactly what we're getting into. After that—" Vasili yawns. "After that, I'm going to try and sleep for as long as I can get away with."

Vette grins at that. "Now you're talking my language," she says. She starts walking towards the cockpit, glancing over her shoulder as she reaches the door. "C'mon! I wanna see what this sexy thing can do!"

 

With some persuasion, Vasili convinces Vette that the _Cart'ar_ 's maiden voyage probably shouldn't involve too much fancy flying—especially given that Vasili is still feeling the aftereffects of the Dark Temple's influence and the creeping sickness that comes from watching the Ravager do its work. The ship leaves Dromund Kaas space without hitch, and in the span of a few hours, the ship has been pointed in the direction of Balmorra and they have a full forty-eight standard hours before they reach their destination.

Vasili holes up in the main bunk— _his_  bunk—and curls up on the too-soft bed with a datapad to research this strange planet. _Balmorra_. Words like war-torn, guerrilla, and deadlocked pass across his eyes, but he only manages to absorb a quarter of what he reads, at best, before everything starts to swim together. Vasili places the datapad on the bedside table, curling up on top of the blankets. He's asleep almost as soon as his eyes close, fading into dreams of death and war.

* * *

Forty-eight hours until they reach Balmorra, and Vasili sleeps for barely six—and the moment he wakes up, he can't find it in him to go back to sleep.

He fills the rest of the time with training in the cargo bay, unsure of how to feel about the fact that the _Cart'ar_ already came equipped with training droids. Really, it's not the training droids themselves that bother him in the end—it's the fact that they were already set up with shoot-to-kill protocols. Just another test from his generous master, he supposes.

Vasili is in the kitchen, poring over its sparse shelves, when he feels the ship slow. Vette is whistling as she walks past the door, her lekku swinging almost jauntily. She leans against the doorframe, briefly glancing at the "meal" in Vasili's hands: a single ration bar and a mug of instant caf. 

"Not to interrupt your, er, 'dinner,' boss," she says, crossing the floor and dropping herself into one of the kitchen chairs, "but we've hit Balmorra atmo, and the spaceport down in Sobrik sent us the all-clear to land pretty much the second they saw us. Should probably make planetfall in about an hour and a half as long as none of the crazies on the ground try to shoot us down." 

Vasili feels his face go hot with embarrassment, and he hurriedly puts the ration bar down. "Thanks, Vette," he says. He glances down in to his mug of caf before deciding, ultimately, to just knock the whole thing back and damn the consequences. His throat burns, just a little, and he coughs before he speaks again. "You should probably buckle in—I have to call Darth Baras to let him know we're here."

Vette gives a cheeky salute and pushes her chair back. "You got it, boss!"

The ship has already started to shudder slightly as it enters Balmorra's atmosphere, and Vasili's steps are shaky on the way to the holoterminal. He dials in the appropriate frequency and kneels as Baras's image flickers to life once more.

"Ah, apprentice, you have arrived on Balmorra. Excellent," Baras intones, his voice conveying none of his supposed pleasure in Vasili's arrival. "Your contact will be one Lieutenant Malavai Quinn. I trust you will find him most helpful."

"I've no doubt, master," Vasili replies, keeping his head down. 

"Lieutenant Quinn will meet you in his offices at Sobrik headquarters. We shall speak again when he has briefed you." And without another word, the holo flickers out.

* * *

No one even considers shooting the _Cart'ar_  down as it lands, and Vette pulls the ship into one of the spaceport's empty hangars without a bit of fuss. She flashes a broad grin the second they touch down, which only grows wider when Vasili gives an appreciative thumbs-up.

Sobrik must have once been a bustling city. Vasili can see the traces everywhere—in its empty market stalls, its fractured roads, the stripped infrastructure of its towers, empty flagpoles stuck out from their walls like skeletal fingers reaching out for the sky. Where there once walked ordinary citizens and merchants, however, Vasili sees only soldiers, drably clad in blacks and browns, rifles slung across their backs or held in thickly gloved hands as if they expect a shoot-out to start at any second. He can imagine, barely, a place full of life and color, but all he sees before him is a city that has grown washed-out and weary.

Distantly, he hears the clamor of blaster fire, the whistles and thunder of bombs. 

Vasili and Vette pass through crowds of troops, walking close enough to see their drained, bloodshot eyes. They watch, straightening only a little when they see the lightsabers at his belt, only to slump back down when they don't think he's looking anymore.

The Imperial headquarters are quite possibly the only building in the whole city that have seen any sort of upkeep in years. Its halls are clean, free of the clutter and dust that seems to blanket every other surface in sight. But even this place, Vasili thinks, isn't without its turmoil, judging by the voices drifting down the corridor. 

"—the best I could do," stammers a soft voice, the faintest hint of Kaas City in the accent.

Vasili nearly walks straight past the door the voices are coming from, not wanting to eavesdrop—but there's the issue of the plaque beside its frame. _Lieutenant M. Quinn._  Ktah. He knocks softly, but hearing no acknowledgment, has little choice but to slowly open the door and slip inside.

"If _that_ was your best, you're useless to me," utters another voice, this one strong, clear. Vasili takes a small step forward to see two human men bickering, one with his hand grasped tightly on the collar of the other's shirt. "Insurgents on the loose, dozens of Imperial soldiers dead and wounded, because of your _best_. The Empire cannot afford such brash displays of incompetence as you've shown today—especially not here, and especially not now." The man's lip twists in a mask of cold anger. "I could shoot you dead with a clear conscience. Is that what you want?"

The first stutters for several seconds before violently shaking his head. "No, sir." He falters as the grip on his shirt is released, half-stumbling before finally regaining his balance.

"Then focus, Corporal." The second stares down at his subordinate, his eyes like ice. "Dismissed."

As the corporal rushes to leave the room, he careens into Vasili, the sound drawing his superior's attention towards the door. Immediately, the man stiffens, bowing sharply at the waist as Vasili crosses the distance between them. "I apologize for the delay, my lord," he says, gaze to the ground. He straightens, his eyes briefly flitting downwards, taking Vasili in. Vasili tries not to squirm. "Lieutenant Malavai Quinn, at your service. I am to be your liaison here on Balmorra."

Vasili barely stops himself from bowing back. Instead, he inclines his head, like he would have to a peer back in the Fleet. Old habits, he thinks. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Lieutenant."

Quinn respectfully inclines his head in turn. "The pleasure is mine, my lord, I assure you." He folds his hands behind his back and spaces his feet apart at parade rest. "Lord Baras will brief you personally, but I have been instructed to acquaint you with the climate here on Balmorra first."

Oh, thank the stars. A local is certainly going to have a better eye for what's going on here than Vasili ever could, and he's bound to learn more here than from skimming a datapad while half-asleep. "By all means," Vasili says.

"While the Empire wrestled control of Balmorra from the Republic during the Galactic War," Quinn says, "we were never able to completely eradicate them, or purge their influence from its space." His face is calm and composed, but his voice is tinged with the barest hint of bitterness. "Even now, there remains a rather sizable resistance movement—no one wants to admit to it, but it's plainly clear that the Republic is backing it."

Vasili wets his lips, the implication of what's being asked of him quite clear. He plays along, as he always must. "I hope that I'll have the chance to help," he says.

For the briefest fraction of a second, Quinn's eyes seem to flash with emotion, but he quickly resumes his mask of composure. "Something tells me your presence will leave an indelible impression on the state of things, my lord," he says. "I look forward to it."

Baras's orders echo in Vasili's mind. _Bring rage. Bring death._  An indelible impression indeed—but all Vasili can think of is a crater brought on by a meteor, crushing and burning everything it touches.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PRAISE THE SUN WE'RE FINALLY ON BALMORRA. And, bonus—two updates in one week, my friends! Consider this my apology for skipping the week before last.
> 
> As ever, huge thanks to Dearest Coauthor KathrynShadow for her beta services and for putting up with my screaming. Not only about this fic, but. You know. In general.

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the wild ride of my poor Warrior, who is in way the hell over his head literally always. I really appreciate any and all constructive comments, which you can feel free to direct either here or at my Tumblr, @lordvitya. (Also, anyone who can correctly guess the source of each chapter title gets a cookie.) Special thanks to my dear friend and beta, KathrynShadow. <3  
> Buckle in, my friends. It's gonna be a long ride.


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